Turning to PHP development

Philthy

Hey.

I've been a asp.net developer for years now, but I've decided to jump into the PHP world.
However, I'm a little overwhelmed by all the different tools and libraries out there. When I develop in asp.net, I use Visual Studio, and SQL Server, and I'm set. Pretty much everything is available.

Which tools would you recommend I install to have what I need? I understand that MySql is the preferred database system.

In terms of Libraries, I've been using the .NET framework, which is pretty much a one-stop shop for web development on that platform. Which Library is the preferred one in PHP? I know there are several, but there is allways one that is more popular.

Do you know any good examples on how to build a web application from scratch? They are usually a good way to learn.

Thanks

tiborv

Hello.

For basic learing development you need

linux -> LAMP - http://script.wareseeker.com/PHP/lamp-mysql-php-database-driven-website-design-and-development-part-i.zip/19719 AND browse the google
windows -> WAMP http://www.wampserver.com/en/

Thats all you need, just configure your apache httpd server.

Use some php IDE like zend,php designer,... And start to code 🙂

NogDog

Your most important tool is The Manual.

As Tiborv alluded to, you can set up a [LWM]AMP (Linux/Windows/Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform on your PC for learning and testing. Either follow the installation directions in the manual, or download and install one of the number of *AMP installation packages out there.

Any of the numerous editors/IDEs that have context-sensitive highlighting and parse-checking for PHP will be very useful. Search/browse the "Echo Lounge" sub-forum here for a number of threads on editor and IDE comparisons and preferences.

Zend Framework is probably "the" library in terms of power, versatility, and size. But depending on what you want to do, one of the more narrowly focused libraries such as CodeIgniter might be both more appropriate and easier to get up to speed on.

Also be aware of the PEAR repository, with a wide variety of packages for all sorts of purposes (and with a wide variety of documentation quality, unfortunately).

shawty

Philthy,

I work in both environments so i know the culture shock that can ensue from changing.

I've worked both sides of the coin for so long now that working in both languages is second nature.

If your doing C#/ASP.NET then you'll likley have an IIS Webserver installation. The good thing is, that you can just head to the PHP web site and download the windows binary. Running that and answering the questions appropriate for IIS will install the PHP engine under IIS and you can then use the visual studio IDE to develop PHP scripts.

You won't however get syntax & colour highlighting or anything like that, but you will get the advanced editing features that the VS editor has available.

If you want colour highlighting, then i use "ultra edit" for all my editing, and run my scripts from the command prompt using "PHP -q <scriptname>"

If your running under linux, then depending on your install you can use RPM or APT-GET to install the required parts.

Watch out for my new series of articles called "The ABC of PHP" appearing on PHPBuilder soon, that should give you a good starting point.

As for Pear i really don't use any of them, but your milage may vary. My advice is to not use any toolkits or libraries until your comfortable with the language itself, trying to get to grips with high level libraries & toolkits before you understand the language will very likley confuse you.

Cheers

Shawty

nrg_alpha

My personal opinion, it's XAMPP for localhost server setup and as for my IDE of choice, it's the PHP version of Netbeans 6.5.

Just my .0002¢ (adjusted for deflation in this econolapse).

(P.S Follow Nog's advice and do a forum search for IDEs and whatnot to get a more full comparison on such hot-button topics).

Philthy

shawty;10904553 wrote:
Philthy,

I work in both environments so i know the culture shock that can ensue from changing.

I've worked both sides of the coin for so long now that working in both languages is second nature.

If your doing C#/ASP.NET then you'll likley have an IIS Webserver installation. The good thing is, that you can just head to the PHP web site and download the windows binary. Running that and answering the questions appropriate for IIS will install the PHP engine under IIS and you can then use the visual studio IDE to develop PHP scripts.

You won't however get syntax & colour highlighting or anything like that, but you will get the advanced editing features that the VS editor has available.

If you want colour highlighting, then i use "ultra edit" for all my editing, and run my scripts from the command prompt using "PHP -q <scriptname>"

If your running under linux, then depending on your install you can use RPM or APT-GET to install the required parts.

Watch out for my new series of articles called "The ABC of PHP" appearing on PHPBuilder soon, that should give you a good starting point.

As for Pear i really don't use any of them, but your milage may vary. My advice is to not use any toolkits or libraries until your comfortable with the language itself, trying to get to grips with high level libraries & toolkits before you understand the language will very likley confuse you.

Cheers

Shawty

Ok, so that means I can use VS for everything, including running the application on IIS, except for the highlighting stuff?

shawty

Yes and no.

Using the debugging will only work for the ASP.NET portions of your app, and F5/F6 for the built in cassini server will only work for ASP.NET projects.

However, you can develop using the IDE, but keep a copy of your browser open separately. Thats the way i do it if i'm using VS. That way i get to use VS for all the other stuff, such as the CSS designer, the XML editor and so on, but to execute the PHP use the browser.

The other way, and the one which i generally use for Linux hosts, is to create a share using Samba, then mount that share in windows, and use something like ultraedit for editing the PHP directly on the share, and again keep a browser open in the background. I then use things like LiquidXML for editing XML, Topstyle3 for the CSS and Photoshop and other tools where needed.

The advantage of using VS is the fact that you have editors for most of the file-types you need to hand, and if your working on a staging server you also have the site deployment tools, which will also copy any PHP in the project directory when you sync the projects.

Cheers

Shawty