Large (for me anyway) projects.

dougal85

I am in the middle of making up a website that has various features... blog system, shoutbox, photogallery, etc etc.

Just a home page sorta deal.

Anyway, I am finding it increasingly difficult to edit things as i get more files. It just takes a while. This is partly because i am making it up as i go, since ive not done a project this big in PHP before i found it hard to plan (i did try) as my plans kept changing.

Anyway i was just looking for some general advice in sorting larger projects? at the moment ive got a bunch of file with various functions. IE. Blog functions contains add, update, delte blog etc.

One thing i was wondering, how does PHP handle files that just contain functions?

is it slow to include a file with lots of functions when you turn out to use only one?

Thanks

Dougal

help_wanted

it depends on how large your functions file is.

But generally you could break out your functions into 2 files.

1 file is used when veiwing the site.
1 file is used in the admin section. (Add, Edit, Delete functions)

if those two files are stilll to large, then you would break it down further.
Blog Admin
News Admin
Picture Admin
Blog Viewer
News Viewer
Picture Viewer

and call them when needed. I would recomend installing one of the "this page took X seconds to excute scripts" then you can play around and see what is an acceptable level of time for you.

Chris

dougal85

oo, thats a good idea. I''l go and check google in a sec but do you know any of these scripts to recommend?

Blulagoon

You could try something home grown like this:

<?PHP
$time_start = time();
// run your script here, includes and functions and all
$time_end = time();
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo "Ran script in ".$time." seconds";

If you get a returned value of zero, your script is running in less than 1 second which is OK in my book, so no real need to complicate the process with microtime().
Blu

Rodney_H_

dougal85 wrote:
...

Anyway, I am finding it increasingly difficult to edit things as i get more files.

...

Dougal, I am working on a big project at work, too. I have been developing a site for about four months, and have about ten more weeks to go, but it will likely turn into an ongoing project.

What I (thankfully) decided early on, was to implement a template system. Makes editing MUCH easier.

Therefore, the markup on the page is determined by a template page that is pulled into each page to structure it.

Then, there is the CSS file(s).

Lastly, there are the PHP scripts that determine the content.

Seems like this is the best way to do large projects, by separating content from html markup, and separating still the styles from html markup. BY doing this, I can change the layout and the style of the site by only modifying two files: The template, and the Global Style Sheet.

Hope that helps.

bo0

Rodney H. wrote:
Dougal, I am working on a big project at work, too. I have been developing a site for about four months, and have about ten more weeks to go, but it will likely turn into an ongoing project.

What I (thankfully) decided early on, was to implement a template system. Makes editing MUCH easier.

Therefore, the markup on the page is determined by a template page that is pulled into each page to structure it.

Then, there is the CSS file(s).

Lastly, there are the PHP scripts that determine the content.

Seems like this is the best way to do large projects, by separating content from html markup, and separating still the styles from html markup. BY doing this, I can change the layout and the style of the site by only modifying two files: The template, and the Global Style Sheet.

Hope that helps.

I agree, a template system is always a good idea when working on big projects.

Another good idea is to set out what information will be going in and coming out of the system. Most people head into projects without any planning at all. This causes many problems and time delays, especially when using a database.

So, my advice is to first work out exactly what you are creating, and then make a list of inputs and outputs.