Best Practices Philip Windridge

Links Naming Conventions   Pseudocode  _std.html _std.html A standard style for code written in PHP 

References Sommerville, I. 2007, Software engineering, 8th edn, Addison-Wesley, Harlow. Coggeshall, J. et. al 2005, PHP 5 Unleashed, SAMS

Lecture Outcomes To outline and show examples of simple, good practice when developing code.

Where are you? Find that programming is in just a source of mental anguish Find that programming fills a major void in my life I use it as much as I have to and no more I enjoy program- ming, I can clearly see that it will be useful

What are Best Practices? We are not (in the positive sense) hackers So we need to work at…  Suitability of code – planning  Clarity of code – readability Adherence to standards Keywords  Planning, consistency/style, documentation

Plan

Hangman

Hangman (partial) READ guess APPEND guess to end of stringOfGuesses FOR each letter in wordToBeGuessed IF letter is in stringOfGuesses THEN INCREMENT lettersGuessed APPEND letter to end of wordToDisplay IF letter is same as current guess THEN SET letterWasFound to TRUE END IF ELSE APPEND “_” to end of wordToDisplay ENDIF END LOOP

Style

Hangman (partial) $a = $_POST['submit']; $b.= $a; for($i = 0; $i < $c; $i++){ if(strstr($b, $d[$i])){ $e++; $f.= $d[$i]; if($a === $d[$i]){$g = true;}} else {$f.= "_ ";}}

Hangman (partial) $guess = $_POST['submit']; $guesses.= $guess; for($i = 0; $i < $wordToBeGuessed_length; $i++){ if(strstr($guesses, $wordToBeGuessed[$i])){ $lettersGuessed++; $wordToDisplay.= $wordToBeGuessed[$i]; if($guess === $wordToBeGuessed[$i]){ $letterWasFound = true;}} else{ $wordToDisplay.= "_ ";}}

Hangman (partial) $guess = $_POST['submit']; $guesses.= $guess; for ($i = 0; $i < $wordToBeGuessed_length; $i++) { if (strstr($guesses, $wordToBeGuessed[$i])) { $lettersGuessed++; $wordToDisplay.= $wordToBeGuessed[$i]; if ($guess === $wordToBeGuessed[$i]) { $letterWasFound = true; } } else { $wordToDisplay.= "_ "; }

Documentation

Hangman (partial) $guess = $_POST['submit'];//Get the letter guessed $guesses.= $guess;//Add it to the rest of the guesses //Check each letter in the word for ($i = 0; $i < $wordToBeGuessed_length; $i++) {// against all the letters guessed if (strstr($guesses, $wordToBeGuessed[$i])) {//If the letter has been guessed $lettersGuessed++; $wordToDisplay.= $wordToBeGuessed[$i]; if ($guess === $wordToBeGuessed[$i]) {//If current guess is successful $letterWasFound = true; } } else {//if letter doesn’t match any letter $wordToDisplay.= "_ ";//guessed so far }

Standards

Web Standards Responsible designers create web sites that are standards compliant  It is better for the web It is possible to design web sites that are not compliant to web standards  Why do this?  We know better already We are creating web sites that are compliant to XHTML 1.0  Supported by major browsers  Comes in Strict, Transitional and Frameset flavours

Web Standards It is not enough to say:  “It looks OK with Internet Explorer” or  “Checked it with FireFox and it looked ok” It is not enough that mark-up merely looks right in the browser Design for the Internet, design for cross platform compatibility, design for professional pride and most of all…  Make your design work in all the ways your users wish to interact with it  Do not dictate the Internet to the user – it is not our job to do so!

Being nice to yourselves!

Improving Your Code Use functions where code can be generalised Use separate files for PHP where common code will be used across multiple pages

Improving Your Code Code available within the page  User defined functions Code available across a number of web pages  include  require  include_once  require_once