Simple Coding Style for PHP - Part 2/2

Some more guidelines:

• "foreach" is better than "for" which is better than "while".
• Never use nonsense names for variables e.g. foo, sz, var and etc.
• Try not to use global variables but if for some reason use them then all global variables and constants will be represented by capital letters e.g. $CACHE_PATH, $FILE_NAME and etc.
• Try making classes where possible.
• Long-lived variable (not necessarily a global, or even in the main scope; it is simply a variable that is used through any significant length of code and/or whose representation can use clarification) should have concise but descriptive names.
• Temporary variables should be short and concise. Numeric variables used for iteration should always be named i, j, k, l, m, and n.
• We’re not going to use tags like the following . We’ll be using or <script language="php"> </script> (work in Front Page too).
• Use echo not print.
• We’ll be using C and C++ style comments i.e. "//" and "/* */". We won’t use "#".
• Comments like the following are useless so avoid using them.

  // Increment i
  $i++;
  

• Using phpdoc for documentation.
• For multiword names for variables, use underscores to break words.

  $num_elements = count($elements);

• Function Names:

  They should be all lowercase, and multiword names should be separated by underscores. e.g.

  function print_hello($name)
  { 
  echo "Hello $name"; 
  }
  

• Class Names:

  • The first letter of a class name is capitalized. This visually distinguishes a class name from a member name.
  • Underscore should be used to simulate nested namespaces.
  • Multiword class names should be concatenated, and the first letter of each word should be capitalized. e.g.

    	class XML_RSS {}
    	class Text_PrettyPrinter {}
    	

• Method Names:

  The Java style is to concatenate words in multiword method names and uppercase the first letter of every word after the first. e.g.

  class XML_RSS 
  { 
      function startHandler() {} 
  }
  

• Naming Consistency:

  Variables that are used for similar purposes should have similar names. e.g.

  
  $max_element;
  $min_element;
  $sum_element;
  $prev_item;
  $curr_item;
  $next_item;
  

• Matching Variable Names to Schema Names:

  Variable names that are associated with database records should always have matching names.

  $query   = "SELECT  firstname, lastname, employee_id  
                   FROM    employees" 
  $results =   mysql_query($query); 
  while(list($firstname, $lastname, $employee_id) = mysql_fetch_row()) 
  { 
      //... 
  } 
  
  

• Documentation:

  Use phpDocumentor to generate documentation on the fly. Please take a look at the software www.phpdoc.org.

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