How to Increase My "Advanced" Knowledge of PHP Further? (Quickly)

How to increase my advanced knowledge of PHP further? (quickly)

Everyone who wants to be a PHP programmer, always takes only the first word and completely ignores the second.

While "programming" is WAY more important than "PHP", to be a PHP professional, one should be a programmer in the first place.

So, I'd vote for the last one - reading books. Not on PHP, but on the programming in general. Grady Booch's, Martin Fowler's and even the old Donald Knuth's ones.

It would be also be nice to take a look at some other languages, like Java or Python. Not to switch to them, but to learn from them.

Learning Advanced PHP

udpdate

PHP has shifted these couple of years and now, more than ever, interoperability is of paramount importance. The single most important piece of PHP code would be the piece that can get along with all other bits.

PHP The Right Way - a quick reference on how to do things

PHP Standards Recommendations - or how to start writing PHP for the world

Advanced Computer Science topics are, for the most part, language agnostic ranging from algorithms to large scale software development.

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original answer:

If you are not already into the two bellow I would seriously suggest you start there.

1. Objects
2. MVC (model view controller)

If you are asking this question you probably feel that there probably is a better way to reuse your code. That there probably is a better way to split logic from structure. If that is so go with the two bellow.

It will probably take a while to get used to Objects but it be worth while.

The one best thing I can suggest you is to embrace a framework.

• codeigniter
• zend framework

You'll be forced to write your code following standards and you'll get a much better notion of how advanced php software works.

Where can I learn web programming from start to mastery?

I started 7 years ago. In my personal experience, your road to programming will look something like this:

HTML -> CSS -> Javascript -> PHP/MySQL
[Insert other web script language
here] -> "Desktop Languages"

For HTML (and CSS), I started by using a graphical editor at (then freewebs.com) webs.com that allowed me to add code snippets. I used some random GeoCities site (may it rest in peace) to look up things. Now, use Google or Bing.

Then, I got Jeffrey Zeldman's book, Designing with Web Standards. I followed through the book, typing out the code in notepad. Try to understand what the code does.

Do yourself a favor, use Notepad++ or Programmer's Notepad. They support automatic tabbing for neater code. It will make you a better and more sane coder in the long run.

Another thing I used to do was look at people's code by right clicking in my browser and hitting "view source".

This only gets you the HTLM/CSS after the PHP has been run and the Javascript before it was run. Google Chrome is good for analyzing scripts because of the debugging capabilities. (Don't worry about that yet though.)

Javascript was an adventure back then. Now, we have jQuery. Start with that or a similar framework. This can be researched online. I have never bought a Javascript book. I do have an ancient one from Visual Quickstart that I used to learn what a method looks like. Beyond that, the particular book in question is
an outdated rag.

To learn PHP/MySQL you can get a book. The two languages are often put together so finding books that show you how to use them in tandem should be a snap. I used O'reilly books for PHP.

I don't like the online PHP reference so much, because when I'm testing I don't always have internet. I use a virtual server setup on my machine. Look into that when you are ready to start learning PHP and MySQL.

The last thing to remember is that web standards are always changing, but don't get too crazy about it. when I started, XHTML was all the rage and now everyone is talking about HTML5. I still use XHTML as do many others. It goes to show that things move at different paces for everyone.

Good luck, I hope I helped!

EDIT: Geoff Adams pretty much sums up my post - Play around the invest in books. And, it will take time. I'm till nowhere near perfect.

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