Semantic typing Semantic typing is an old practice, where the name of the parameter would also tell what its type is. It is typing, because a $string is supposed to be typed, and it is semantic, because only the human reader is actually using the meaning : PHP doesn’t really care. The interesting part is […]
27
Sep
Sep
Code inventories Code inventories are lists of items iof the same type. It is also the process to making such list. The inventory is meant to provide a complete view over available ressources. Translated to code, PHP or else, it is an auditing process that collects code structures of one type, for further analysis. For […]
04
Jul
Jul
Some Aging Parameters Parameters are part of the signature of methods and functions. They are one of the ways to inject data into a piece of code, for it to be processed. PHP has a lot of options and they have been available since ever. They are easy to find in recent and legacy code. […]
01
Jul
Jul
PDFF : PHP Document File Format details In the first episode, we have presented the origin of the PDFF: how it emerges to be a convenient format to describe PHP component, with a good level of details, some versioning and a dual-readability human/machine. In this second episode, we’ll introduce the format and the content of […]
15
Jun
Jun
Late, later and latest PHP checks PHP applies various checks when processing source code. When those checks fail, they might generate a Fatal errorand stop execution. They are the bane of production servers, and every PHP developper tries to avoid them as much as possible (unlike static code analyser authors which try to generate them). […]
07
Jun
Jun
Weekly reportekly The Weekly report is a special audit report. It sounds weird initially, to get a report per week, yet this is exactly what it does. Each week, a new report is built, based on a selection of different rules. And this is helps a lot with code quality! A different set every week […]
02
Jun
Jun
Reviewing Property Declaration In PHP Properties are a foundation part of classes. They are declared with their visibility, and their name. Then, they might be augmented with a default value, a type (even several), and may be also options like static or readonly. With hierarchies and large families of classes, we shall start reviewing property […]
10
May
May
Move that foreach() inside the method Several PHP functions work with single or multiple values. For example, array_merge(), which merges several arrays into one. Or, isset(), which checks simultaneously the existence of several variables. str_replace() and preg_replace_callback() also come to mind. This is a good place to move that foreach() inside the method. This approach […]
15
Apr
Apr
Literal candidates for constants Literals are hard coded values in the source. Once they are written, they can’t be changed without altering the source code. This is always fine, initially, while building the first implementations. Yet, later, it may arise that such literal have to be managed from different points of the code. This is […]
22
Feb
Feb
6 unicity traps that sideline PHP code Sometimes, code is being ignored by PHP : code is painstakingly written but never gets executed. How is that even possible? May be, because it was not so painstakingly coded. Indeed, there are some PHP coding structures which natively and silently overwrites or ignore code. This leads to […]