The Question Nobody Can Answer

dog8me

I am trying to learn PHP these days and been doing it for couple of days, try figure out how the PHP architecture works in PHP but then words come into my mind that tells me:

Everyone are making codes but everyone use different style coding the PHP. I want to drop question to people who are beginners and also for professional php's people doing this daily...

Let's say I want to create "Script of your choice" which is good for beginners to understand like take for example a Guestbook. Now another question drops into my mind. How do I know what kind of
functions I need and please do not say "RTFM" I've done it b4 and
ofcourse people who do PHP daily visit PHP.NET daily to study & learn more from the Genius that invented PHP what a great guys!

I believe I can learn, I believe you can teach me, I believe I can learn anything I want to learn, just need to spent time learning it.
It would be a big hit for a website online such as PHPbuilder.net to write article about "Class 101: How you start writing your code!" or something similiar to this title. Ok, if this sounds stupid
by me you are free to laught your ass off while u're drinking your Magic Cup of Coffee in your job somewhere in the world, cheers!

If you can answer my question I believe nobody can answer 100% I would love to get some kind of feedback. Let's say you could see into my brain right now at this moment you would see
Stairs with no traps on I am located there and got troubles 😛

It would be very nice if you can write article and meet me online at MSN: pulsina@hotmail.com and if you care to chat you are more then welcome to chat with me about anything you want to chat about, specially PHP, I really want to learn this language 🙂

I believe me and the newbies will be really happy and put up our
biggest smile if you can do the Impossible and write together an article which explains how to build PHP script or is it impossible???

Little bird whispered to me earlier nothing is impossible so if you
want to do something you really can if you put your afford into it!
Sorry if my english isn't good enough hope you understand what
I mean by this article. I believe also when I figure it out how PHP
works etc "How to build up my php script" I will laught my ass off
writing this article but again I believe this article will help newbies
at this time.

Sincerely,

dog8me
or Bert in rl

Pig

The biggest beef I had with PHP tuts, is that every damned one of them assumes you understand what you are doing, and tries to teach broader concepts. The manual sucks butt as far as understanding, and what good are beginner tuts that don't teach it at a beginners level.

At one point I thought about writing a tut that covers every newb question I had, ranging from basic syntax to handling writing to files, authentication, string handling, connect and using a database, etc.

I would love to see something that is really written for newbs. Unfortunately, I do not have time. I believe something like this would be a great help for people getting started. I wish you luck.

dog8me

Thank you very much
"May god be with us!"
Hopefully someone will write this article I am waiting for...

Sincerely,

dog8me
as Bert in rl

matt_4013

Hi there, I'm working on a small PHP/MySQL tutorial at the moment, because there are a LOT of people around in your exact same predicament. I've noticed that there are a few tutorials out there, but are mostly out of date, or too confusing for the newbie programmer.

There is no "good" coding style. There's just too many different opinions and ways to go about to allow there to be. You'll get heaps of conflicting answers. Even I conflict with myself with some things. Like this: I write all of my applications with a mixture of procedural and Object Oriented code. Most people will tell you to pick one way and stick to it, but I have a really hard time coming to terms with that. I figure as long as all my code is clearly commented, what's the problem? My code works, it's usually efficient, and other people can read it and understand what's going on (They have to, I code in a team environment).

Anyway, good luck with your forays into the world of php, send me a pm with your email address in it and I'll give you the url to my tutorial when it's done.

Matt

edwardsbc

Most beginners run into problems with PHP because they don't throughly understand many of the other key technologies the web depends on. PHP is just a "glue" product to enhance what you can do on the web. A PHP coder will have far fewer problems if they already understand:

HTTP (including headers and cookies)
XHTML
SQL (and database design)

If you browse these forums you will begin to see that many (if not the majority) of the problems users encounter have very little to do with PHP and a lot to do with not understanding these other technologies. PHP is for the most part a simple scripting language with C-like syntax and hundreds of custom functions. The reason PHP is so popular is those custom functions save the knowledgable programmer a lot of time.

In most PHP Tutorials, the author (for good or ill) assumes you understand these other technologies and concentrates on how PHP can glue them together. A true "newbie" PHP tutorial probably wouldn't even deal with the web, but instead just build a stand-alone PHP (command-line) script.

B-truE

One of the problems that I have seen in PHP tutorials and books is that real application examples are not used very often.

For myself, I have found that reading code line by line, with a line by line explanation is very helpful - especially for a script that I am interested in using.

I found a PHP book that has the line by line of code and the line by line of explanation - very helpful!

For example, one of the scripts that it walks you through is making a form for your website - e.g. a email/feedback form.

Here's a link to read more about it.

PHP for Web Professionals

It is very easy to follow - code and explantions - no nonsense. Let me know what you think of it.

B-truE

morgan

I bought the visual quickstart book "PHP for the worldwide web" and found it very helpful.

leatherback

Hi,

I very much agree with edwards: A lot of problems peple run into, is due to not really knowing html/css/..

As for PhP coding & knowing the functions..

Here is what I do:

If I decide to recode a site, or even build one for scratch, I first sit down with a notepad. (Yes, a piece of paper is what I am referring to!) and a pencil (Not a pen, nope. Don't like them..)

Then I basically write in 5 word sentences down WHAT I expect the page to do. This usually takes 5 minutes, and results in 5-20 statements. I start putting little normal-language pieces of code between it:

Have a form to check data and insert into database:

Build form
if user has not set anything (first time visit) show an empty form
else
if user has set the records_id, grab record, display record, fill form form
else
if user has submitted a record_id, and indicated that he likes the data, insert into DB.

This way you get a very structured idea of what coding has to be done, and you can directly see which parts of coding are repeated several times, and shold become a function.

You can then start coding the basic outline. Or, what I do: I start with the design of the site, so I know what has to go where.

Hope this helps.

5handgang

A really good tutorial for beginners is here:

www.daholygoat.com

Very easy to follow. Very in depth with explaining things. Also fun.

Pig

I disagree. I most of the questions about how to use PHP to create formatting, or understanding how to create a process.

mzanimephp

Originally posted by 5handgang
A really good tutorial for beginners is here:

www.daholygoat.com

Very easy to follow. Very in depth with explaining things. Also fun.

Thanks for posting that. That sites's tutorial is excellent for beginning PHP newbies. I'll keep visiting it. 🙂

5handgang

No problem, i just found the tutorial to be very easy to follow. Perfect for an idiot like me. It flows really good into each section. Unlike alot of tutorials that start out easy to follow then it seems like they skip a couple chapters and you get lost. All newbies should read daholygoat's tut.