After reading Paul’s article “CSS The Star Matrix Pre-loaded“, I wanted to contribute by writing a back-end solution to the CSS effect.
Before we get into this, you will need to have PHP 5 installed and MySQL 3.23 or higher. PHP 5 allows for greater implementation of OOP (Object Oriented Programming) than its predecessors.
If you hang out on enough web development forums, mailing lists, or chatrooms, you’ll eventually get asked this question:
What language should I use to program my next project?
As someone who has been on a few of said forums, mailing lists, and chatrooms for a while now, I hate seeing this question. Yes, it comes around a lot, but repetitiveness isn’t what bugs me about it. What bothers me is that there’s usually very little background information attached to that question, which makes it as open-ended as asking what mode of transportation you should take to get to the store. I can tell you anything from a skateboard to a jet and either vehicle can get you to the store, but to give you the best answer I need to know how far you have to travel, what you plan on buying, and how much money you have, among other things. The same holds true for the programming language question, so let’s look at some factors that can help you choose which language to use on your next project.
For those just joining, it is suggested that you begin with OOP in PHP from a .NET OOP Perspective as this is Part 3 of a series.
This time I am going to talk about the Database class, as every project now-a-days typically stores their information in a database. A good database class can save you time and memory in retrieving results. It should be able to cache previous queries, to recall them later, and it should clear out the results from memory when they are no longer needed.
For those just joining, it is suggested that you begin with OOP in PHP from a .NET OOP Perspective as this is Part 2 of a series.
With that said, I am going to outline the base classes that I referred to in the first article. To start out I will talk about the Error class, as if you do not have a good error handling setup, your application is doomed from the beginning.
Something I think every blogger should do is introduce themselves; it gives the community a little more insight to you. Mark gave me a sweet introduction, but I wanted to share a little bit more and give you a preview of what you’re in store for with my posts.
Search-This welcomes Sara Smith to the team. We are very happy to have Sara join the team. Anyone who follows her blog, i love code knows the warm and friendly writing style she uses; her writing feels like a conversation over coffee.
Having Sara join the team will most certainly benefit the Search-This readers. It’s nice to get the female perspective on things and Sara isn’t one to hold back her opinion. Just look at her new WordPress plugin simply titled “Ask Me” which allows users to forgo the typical “About Me” page of their blog and replace it with a “Ask Me” section that allows readers to get a more intimate view into the blogs author.
Enjoy Sara’s bio below:
User Name: ses5909
I scoured the Internet for the past few days to see how many applications are actively writing their PHP code in an OOP (Object Oriented Programming) fashion and the results are surprising. I have found that many existing applications are not taking advantage of this ability that began its’ existence in PHP 4, which then spread its’ wings like an eagle and soared in PHP 5. I have been working on converting one of my largest projects in PHP from a style that is FAR from OOP to an architecture completely based on OOP and this experience has been very helpful and challenging and primarily based on my .NET experience with OOP.
