One Day Workshop
How to build a PHP5 web app in a day
Learn how to make your coding life simpler, enjoyable and more rewarding with PHP5
We had a great time at our first PHP5 workshop on May 1st so we thought we would run it again. Why not join us?
PHP is one of the most commonly used web languages in use today. Many of today's most popular sites such as Flickr, Digg, Wikipedia, Facebook and wordpress.com are all made possible thanks to PHP.
This practical and intimate one day workshop, run by Carsonified team member Keir Whitaker, will guide you through the steps required to move from PHP4 to PHP5 by demonstrating how to build a simple "lifestream" web app in a day.
At the end of the workshop you will leave with a sound understanding of PHP5 programming techniques that will help make your coding life easier and ultimately more enjoyable and rewarding.
Focussing extensively on the new featuers in PHP5 you will learn how to:
- Get started with OOP (Object Orientated Programming)
- Build your own classes to interact with a database
- Fetch and manipulate data from web services such as Twitter, Flickr and ma.gnolia
- Incorporate a simple templating engine into your site
- Save time by adding open source classes to your projects
- Find out where to turn to when you need help with PHP5
This workshop is aimed at designers and developers who have an intermediate understanding of PHP but would like to take their coding to the next level. Throughout the workshop, you are encouraged to put forward your ideas, ask any questions or bring up any issues that you are hoping to resolve.
If you have any questions or prefer to pay by credit card over the phone, just email
What You'll Walk Away With
- The Survival Kit
- - Each attendee will receive our exclusive Survival Kit. It's companion CD is chock-full of practical examples, links and snippets of code that we use everyday.
- Best Practice Advice
- - There will also be a section covering best practice plus a full set of presentation slides from the day.
- Practical Knowledge
- - We're not going to bore you with theory. At our workshops we aim to give you practical training that focuses on what you need to help you get started right away.
Who should attend?
- Designers who have been "playing" with PHP but would like to learn more
- Anyone who would like to learn more about Object Orientated Programming
Past Reviews
"I gained tons of practical advice. All valuable hands-on stuff."- Henrik Pettersen, MTV
"The question and answer section was excellent" - Mark Francis, Yahoo!
"The workshop was extremely useful and well organised" - Duncan Ponting, BBC
"Comparing example architecture to our own gave us some really great ideas" - Richard Keen, Multimap
"It was invaluable to get confirmation that other big players are using the same approaches as us" - Erki Esken, Skype
"I loved the real-life practical examples and insight into the rules behind web standards" - Andy Brockie, Guardian Unlimited
"It was great meeting other quality developers" - Ryan King, Technorati
"The workshop was great for comparing experiences" - Jeff Veen, Adaptive Path
"Being able to ask questions and participate freely was great" - Marcia Palmer, Cabinet Office
"No fluff, just good real-world info. Bravo!" - Christopher Kelly, State Farm Insurance
"Great real-world examples." -Ahren Gerber, elliance.com
"Superb organisation and preparation - thankyou!" - Andrew Hoskings
"What a great workshop! Both engaging and useful." - Chris Graver, Bank of America
How large is the workshop?
We've limited the number of attendees to 10, to enable everyone to participate in the practical elements of the course and get the most from the day.
Schedule
- Registration & Fresh tea, coffee and pastries: 8:15 - 9:00am
- Planning the Lifestream application
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- What's involved in creating a lifestream using PHP5?
- The right tools for the job
- Servers, editors, FTP clients and web hosts
- Approaches to development
- Useful browser tools, web sites and plugins
- From PHP4 to PHP5
-
- Procedural Vs OOP
- Seperating code and presentation
- DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)
- What is OOP?
- What are classes and objects?
- Inheritance and why it rocks!
- Coffee Break: 10:30 - 10:45
- Creating a MySQL class
-
- Coding styles and namespaces
- Elements of a class
- The power of the "constuctor"
- Public and private variables
- Getting and setting best practice
- Class methods
- How to create and use the class in your own code
- Directory structures, autoload and nice clean URL's
-
- Creating a flexible directory structure
- Security considerations
- Ways to handle global variables
- How to use "autoload" to save time
- What is loose coupling?
- What is a "front controller" and when to use one
- The wonder of mod_rewrite for creating memorable URL's
- Fully catered lunch: 12:30 - 13.30
- Adding in "Open Source" Classes
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- When to use other peoples code in your projects
- Where to find them
- How to turn a cool function into a class
- Practical examples of popular open source classes
- Making life easy for your designer
-
- The benefits of using a template engine
- Adding SMARTY to the mix
- Using SMARTY plugins
- Variables, loops and other SMARTY goodness
- Building pages with reusable templates
- Approaches to flexible templates
- Coffee Break: 15:30 - 15:45
- Bringing it all together
-
- Planning the classes and templates
- How to use CURL and SimpleXML to grab data from web services
- Caching for better performance
- Discussion on how the app could be extended
- Q & A: 17:30 - 18:00
-
- Discussion on topics of your choice
- Dinner (Optional): 19:00
-
- Join members of the Carsonified team for dinner and chat at a local restaurant
Who's speaking?
Keir Whitaker
Keir started his career as an IT support technician in an East London NHS organisation and progressed to the position of Web Services Manager for a large NHS Trust. He was instrumental in developing a secure intranet still in use today with over 2000 users.
After leaving the NHS he freelanced as a PHP and Microsoft .Net programmer for over three years and worked on software projects for a wide range of clients from individuals to large corporate companies. He joined Carsonified in February 2008 and is passionate about web technologies and can often be found tinkering with APIs.
Keir blogs occasionally and posts interesting links almost daily at Five & Lime. You can also find him on Twitter.
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