So, I started a personal blog ...

looks good... best of luck with it

whats a blog?

I will hopefully never go to that blog

Increase the font size on the code, dude. It's hard to read.

Thanks! I've been doing what I do for a while, so I figure if I can pass some tips along and it helps someone, all the better.


Agreed.

Sorry, missed your comment before. I made it 14 px now. Is that a bit easier? It is easier for ME to read (it WAS small, you're right), and it doesn't blow out the table (bonus!). Let me know.

Thanks!

This week's update is about IDEs and why I use them versus Notepad. The "popular" thing to say is "yeah, I write code on Notepad," and then (I assume) to throw down "old school" gang signs. I discuss this on Wednesday in a short commentary piece.

Opening paragraph (the rest is scheduled for Wednesday, and will appear automatically on the blog, not on GFY):

I don't know, seems it's all the rave these days

Ok, write about your blog on your blog, not here

SHIT!

Didn't know

Better go and download PressWord versions 7 and start making blost pogs.

thanks for teh tip

That cracked me up.

your "put up or shut up" code example is a Hello World Class ? :D

What would you prefer? I figured it'd be an uncomplicated way to show the way I code, indent, document, etc.

Do you have a better suggestion to illustrate those concepts? I'd be happy to hear it out and decide if I'd like to post it.

Looks good. If you're going to the effort of coding in classes in PHP, you should use exceptions too (..if you already don't)

yeah, it did. i just thought the two concepts were funny

Thanks very much. For error handling in the Hello class, I used the default handler in switch(), rather than throwing an actual exception. I wanted the code to be backward-compatible with PHP4.

Your comment definitely made me laugh ... I just added the clarification for other people who might be tempted to "not get it" if you know what I mean.

Well, considering PHP4 is well and truly gone now...(but I do understand your frustration)
Coders discussing style always turns into a pissing contest, but here we go.

There are a few things that could be built on / improved. Not sure if you left them out because it was a simplistic example, or because you don't use them.

I spent pretty much every moment of the day coding, and could have done w/ some sage tips, especially w/ OOP in PHP when I was learning, so take this for what it is.

- Making the $returnText shouldn't be public. It should be private, with an accessor function.
- You shouldn't refer to it as $returnText .= " " - it should be $this->returnText This will save you a hell of a lot of frustration with scope, and missing and overwritten variables down the line
- Returning a string for error checking isn't really that strong, because you then have to further check that string for errors.

You can do this two ways, easily
#1 - Via exceptions - simply throw an exception when you receive bad data, and catch it on the other side, or in the parent class, depending on your heirachy.

#2 - PHP4 Compatible: Have it return a boolean for the results, and let the user fetch them (ie, if (!$helloWorld->GetHelloText('1')) { // error code } else { $helloWorld->GetResult(); }

and so on.
These things become increasingly important as your classes get more complicated - it's important to do it from the ground up.

Using __construct() is very important, too.

The problem, at least in my interpretation, w/ OOP in PHP is that it's not as strict as say Java or c++, meaning that it can be done poorly, which leads to headaches later on.

In any case though, kudos for posting this - there aren't many coders (esp on this board) that are much more than scripters, even less than those that understand design pricinciples and flow (specification, implementation, verification, documentation, etc), normalised db designs, and the big one: security. The number of scripts that I see getting passed around on here that are insecure is scary.

Anyhow.. didn't mean to sound like a grumpy old bastard, the merit of your post inspired me to reply.

What you posted is almost exactly how I'd "scale" the class as it becomes more complicated and/or becomes production code. I can't believe we haven't worked together before on something! Be sure to light up my ICQ.