PHP Developer

Course Overview

Prerequisites

• • Delegates attending this course should have some previous programming experience or at least be familiar with programming concepts. This knowledge can be obtained by attendance on the pre-requisite Introduction to Programming course. Familiarity with HTML and SQL is advantageous but not essential.
    
    Pre-Requisite Courses - Introduction to Programming

Target Audience for this Course

• • The PHP Developer course is aimed at those who are new to or have had little exposure to PHP, and who will be responsible for building or maintaining PHP scripts/web applications. It may also be of value to those who wish to refresh/renew their knowledge of PHP after some time away from it.

Course Content

• Day 1

  Session 1: Getting Started
  About PHP
  Installing PHP
  PHP editors and IDEs
  Executing a script
  HTML recap
  Serving a PHP web page
  Session 2: syntax
  Tags
  HTML escaping
  Separating instructions
  Comments
  Session 3: Variables, Constants, & Data Types
  Echo and print
  Defining variables
  Variable naming
  Assignment by reference
  Uninitialised variables
  Defining constants
  Magic constants
  Built-in types: null, bool, int, float, string, array, object
  Other types
  Dynamic typing
  Type casting and juggling
  Session 4: Handling User Data
  HTTP requests recap
  HTML form recap
  Command line arguments
  Superglobals
  

• Day 2

  Session 5: Expressions & Operators
  Forms of expressions
  Operators by type: arithmetic, comparison, logical, other
  Operator order of precedence
  Session 6: Control Structures
  if, else, and elseif/else if
  while and do-while
  for and foreach
  break and continue
  switch and match
  Alternative syntax
  include and require
  Session 7: Functions
  Defining functions
  Function arguments
  Passing arguments by reference
  Default argument values
  Variable-length argument lists
  Named arguments
  Return values
  Variable scope
  Built-in functions
  Anonymous functions
  Arrow functions
  Session 8: Strings
  Defining strings x 4
  Variable parsing
  Indexing/offsetting
  String functions and operators
  

• Day 3

  Session 9: Arrays
  Defining arrays with and without keys
  Alternative syntax
  Key casting
  Accessing elements
  Creating and modifying elements
  Destructuring
  Unpacking
  Array functions
  Session 10: Classes & Objects
  Defining classes
  Properties and methods
  $this
  Constants
  Instantiating a class
  Accessing properties and calling methods
  Constructors and destructors
  Static members
  Visibility
  Inheritance
  Abstract classes
  Interfaces
  Traits
  Autoloading classes
  Namespaces
  Session 11: Errors & Exceptions
  Errors
  Error types
  Handling errors
  Exceptions
  Exception types
  try, catch, and finally
  Global exception handler
  Session 12: Database Integration
  Vendor-specific extensions
  The PDO extension
  Installation
  Obtaining a connection
  Transaction management
  Prepared statements
  Error handling
  The PDO and associated classes
  

• Day 4

  Session 13: Authentication, Cookies, & Sessions
  Basic HTTP authentication
  Writing and reading cookies
  Managing sessions
  Session 14: Patterns, Templating, Packages, & Frameworks
  The MVC pattern
  The DI pattern
  The Singleton pattern
  Templating
  Package management
  PHP frameworks
  Session 15: Web Service Integration
  Web service recap
  Asynchronous HTTP requests with JavaScript
  

• Note

  Course technical content is subject to change without notice.
  
  Course content is structured as sessions, this does not strictly map to course timings. Concepts, content and practicals often span sessions.
  

Included with this course

• • Comprehensive course materials and exercises