Cutting-Edge PHP

UMN Code-People: November 7, 2013

David Naughton: UMN Libraries Web Development

Who Cares?

PHP Sucks

What about your Favorite Language?

— Bjarne Stroustrup

"What are five things you hate about your favorite language?"

— brian d foy

"PHP Sucks! But I Like It!"

— Anthony Ferrara

"PHP is much better than you think"

— Fabien Potencier

Not sure I agree with that last phrase, but the title is accurate for most of us.

PHP History

Core Language

• 1995: PHP 1.0
• 2004: PHP 5.0
  • Radically-New Object Model
• 2009: PHP 5.3
  • Namespaces, Lambdas and Closures, ...
• 2012: PHP 5.4
  • Traits, Built-in Web Server, ...
• 2013: PHP 5.5
  • Generators, ...

PHP History

Reusable Components

• 1999: PEAR
• 2011: Composer

SUCKS

PEAR Sucks

High Entry Barriers

• Draconion contribution standards enforced by a central committee.
  • Few contributions to pear.php.net.
  • Multiple, decentralized PEAR "channels".
  • Can't find anything.
• Originally built for system-wide installs, requiring root.
• Complex, poorly-documented system.

PEAR Sucks

Package Counts

Composer

http://getcomposer.org

Composer

— Jordi Boggiano, Composer Co-Creator

Composer

Packages/versions over time

packagist.org: 18,500 packages.

Almost doubled since April!

Composer

Simpler and Easier

• Low entry barriers to publishing on packagist.org.
• Per-app package sets, similar to Ruby Bundler.
• Simple JSON package metadata format, inspired by node.js npm.

Composer Quick Start

After installing Composer...

$ cd app-package-dir/
$ vi composer.json

Declare a dependency:

{
  "require": {
    "guzzle/guzzle": "v3.7.4"
  }
}

Install it:

$ composer install

Using Composer-Installed Packages

Composer automatically generates a PSR-0-compliant autoloader.

require 'app-package-dir/vendor/autoload.php';

$client = new \Guzzle\Http\Client('http://guzzlephp.org');
$request = $client->get('/');
$response = $request->send();

Composer and github.umn.edu

{
  "require": {
    "umnlib/config": "*"
  },
  "repositories": [
    {
      "type": "vcs",
      "url": "git@github.umn.edu:Libraries/config-php.git"
    }   
  ]   
}

(Composer can search multiple repository types for packages: packagist.org, github, PEAR...)

Who Cares?

FIG

PHP Framework Interop Group

PHP Standard Requests, e.g. PSR-0

Drupal, Symfony, almost all major projects participate.

PHP Community and Ecosystem

Symfony

• Symfony: A cutting-edge PHP web framework.
• Symfony Components can be used outside of Symfony, e.g. in Drupal 8.
• Create your own framework... on top of the Symfony2 Components, by Fabien Potencier

Testing

• PHPUnit, now available via Composer!
• Behavior-Driven Development
  • Behat StoryBDD framework, inspired by Ruby Cucumber.
  • PHPSpec SpecBDD framework, inspired by Ruby RSpec.
  • Codeception full-stack BDD testing framework.
• Mockery mock object framework can be integrated with PHPUnit or PHPSpec.
• Prophecy, a highly-opinionated, very powerful and flexible mocking framework. Integrated with PHPSpec, can be used with PHPUnit.

DocBlocks with PHPDoc

phpDocumentor has won, set the PHPDoc standard, and is now available via Composer!

/**
 * Short description.
 *
 * Long description. This text may contain
 * multiple lines and even some _markdown_.
 *
 * * Markdown style lists function too
 * * Just try this out once
 *
 * @param int    $example  Example function/method parameter description.
 * @param string $example2 Second example.
 */

Annotations

Define your own DocBlock annotations with the Doctrine ORM's annotations component:

namespace MyProject\Entities;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping AS ORM;
use Symfony\Component\Validation\Constraints AS Assert;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @MyProject\Annotations\Foobarable
 */
class User {}

PHP Core Language

Metaprogramming

• Reflection
• Magic Methods

Lambdas

...or anonymous functions, introduced in 5.3:

$input = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
$output = array_filter($input, function ($v) { return $v > 2; });

// or...

$max_comparator = function ($v) { return $v > 2; };
$output = array_filter($input, $max_comparator);

$max_comparator = create_function('$v', 'return $v > 2;');

Closures

Lamdbas with state, i.e. anonymous functions that are "closed over" variables from the surrounding scope:

$x = 1;
$incrementor = function() use (&$x) { return ++$x; }
$incrementor(); // 2
$incrementor(); // 3
$incrementor(); // 4

Functional Programming

Lambdas and closures allow functional programming, even the infamous Y-Combinator:

function Y($F)
{
  $func = function ($f) { return $f($f); };
 
  return $func(function ($f) use($F)
  {
    return $F(function ($x) use($f)
    {
      $ff = $f($f);
 
      return $ff($x);
    });
  });
}

Traits

New in 5.4, traits provide OO reuse without inheritance, like interfaces, but with implementation:

class Base {
    public function sayHello() { echo 'Hello '; }
}

trait SayWorld {
    public function sayHello() {
        parent::sayHello();
        echo 'World!';
    }
}

class MyHelloWorld extends Base { use SayWorld; }
$o = new MyHelloWorld();
$o->sayHello(); // Hello World!

For the theory, see Traits - Composable Units of Behavior.

Generators

New in 5.5, generators allow for very simple and easy implementation of iterators:

function fibonacci() {
  $last = 0;
  yield 0;
  $current = 1;
  yield 1;
  while (true) {
    $current = $last + $current;
    $last = $current - $last;
    yield $current;
  }
}

// Prints the first sixteen Fibonacci numbers:
foreach (fibonacci() as $n => $Fn) {
  echo "F[$n] = $Fn\n";
  if ($n == 15) break; // Prevent an infinite loop!
}

Generators are Iterators

An equivalent way to generate the Fibonacci numbers, by calling methods from the Iterator interface, which Generator implements:

$generator = fibonacci();
$reflector = new ReflectionClass($generator);
$reflector->getName(); // Generator
$reflector->getInterfaceNames(); // Iterator, Traversable

while ($generator->valid()) {
  $n = $generator->key();
  $Fn = $generator->current();
  echo "F[$n] = $Fn\n";
  if ($n == $limit) break; // Prevent an infinite loop!
  $generator->next();
}

Further Reading

PHP: The Right Way

Thank You!