The PHP Workshop

Cut through the noise and get real results with a step-by-step approach to learning PHP programming

Key Features

• Ideal for the PHP beginner who is getting started for the first time
• Complete step-by-step exercises and open-ended activities to help build and reinforce key skills
• Structured to let you progress at your own pace, on your own terms
• Use your physical copy to redeem free access to the online interactive edition

Book Description

You already know you want to learn PHP 7, and a smarter way to learn PHP development is to learn by doing. The PHP Workshop focuses on building up your practical skills so that you can develop cutting-edge, high-performance web applications. It's ideal if you're looking to work with an existing application, or even develop your own side project with a PHP framework like Laravel. You'll learn from real examples that lead to real results.

Throughout The PHP Workshop, you'll take an engaging step-by-step approach to understanding PHP development. You won't have to sit through any unnecessary theory. If you're short on time you can jump into a single exercise each day or spend an entire weekend learning about third-party libraries. It's your choice. Learning on your terms, you'll build up and reinforce key skills in a way that feels rewarding.

Every physical copy of The PHP Workshop unlocks access to the interactive edition. With videos detailing all exercises and activities, you'll always have a guided solution. You can also benchmark yourself against assessments, track progress, and receive content updates. It's a premium learning experience that's included with your printed copy. To redeem, follow the instructions located at the start of your PHP guide.

Fast-paced and direct, The PHP Workshop is the ideal companion for PHP beginners. You'll build and iterate on your code like a software developer, learning along the way. This process means that you'll find that your new skills stick, embedded as best practice. A solid foundation for the years ahead.

What you will learn

• Get to grips with fundamental concepts and conventions of PHP 7
• Work with PHP MySQL databases and build dynamic applications
• Learn how to compile logical errors and handle exceptions in your programs
• Explore how PHP unit testing can help create a bug-free development process
• Integrate third-party packages into your applications
• Connect external web services to your applications with tools like Guzzle

Who this book is for

Workshops are ideal for foundational, entry-level developers who are learning something new.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing PHP
2. Types and Operators
3. Control Statements
4. Functions
5. Object-Oriented Programming
6. Using HTTP
7. Data Persistence
8. Error Handling
9. Composer
10. Web Services

Alexandru Busuioc is a Zend-certified engineer with over 12 years of experience with PHP and has developed his programming skills in building robust software that enables performance, extensibility, and low resource usage by default. Working as a senior software engineer for a mobile performance company specialized in user acquisition focused on CPA and CPI mobile campaigns, Alexandru developed skills to create, maintain, and refactor a range of applications, from admin panels to high traffic load platforms, combining modern technologies, including PHP.

David Carr has been developing applications for the web using mostly PHP for the past 12 years. He does this for a living and loves what he does as every day there is something new and exciting to learn. In his spare time, the web development community is a big part of his life. Whether managing online programming groups and blogs or attending a conference, he has found that keeping involved helps him stay up to date. This is also his chance to give back to the community that helped him get started, a place he is proud to be part of.

Markus Gray is a full-stack web developer/designer with 11 years' experience, based in Philadelphia. He has diverse and deep interests in most trending technologies. He spends most of his time helping public and private companies and has also worked with the federal government in the department of education. Currently, he is the CEO of Syncware Technologies, Inc.

Vijay Joshi is a full stack web developer having more than a decade of experience in working with PHP and JavaScript. He loves to work on open-source software and is especially fond of PHP, NodeJS, JavaScript, VueJS, and React. He is also the author of PHP jQuery Cookbook, Mastering jQuery UI, and the technical reviewer of PHP AJAX Cookbook and jQuery UI 1.8 published by Packt. Having learned so much from the open-source community, he wants to give back to the community by helping them learn different open source tools.

Mark McCollum is a self-taught Zend-certified software engineer and over the last decade has been using PHP to build applications for companies ranging from small agencies to enterprise industry leaders. Devoted to software agility, he is an advocate of scrum and pair-programming methodologies. Mark has been a long time co-organizer of his local full stack meetup group, contributing his time to encourage other developers and help them hone their craft.

Bart McLeod is the author of the Zend Framework 1 to 2 Migration Guide published by php[architect]. He graduated in Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands. He works as a painter and sculptor and is also a self-taught Zend-certified engineer, currently holding five certifications including Zend Framework Certified Architect. He is passionate about code quality and testing. He is also the author and maintainer of the vrmlparser project, that allows you to render 3D (legacy) VRML projects with Three.js in the browser.

M A Hossain Tonu is the author of the book PHP Application Development with NetBeans: Beginner's Guide. He has graduated in computer science and engineering from the Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology (DUET) in Bangladesh. He is a certified ScrumMaster, certified Scrum Professional and is currently working at Vantage Labs, Dhaka where he is leading and maintaining a highly available SaaS platform AMPED, that is the single most intuitive and easy to use customer relationship management system on the market and Delyte, which is a new generation customer support for any company support reps.