{"id":1524,"date":"2018-01-19T19:22:56","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T19:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/goofy-trucks.flywheelsites.com\/best-practices-php-coding-style-page-2\/"},"modified":"2018-01-19T19:24:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T19:24:51","slug":"best-practices-php-coding-style-page-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/best-practices-php-coding-style-page-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Practices: PHP Coding Style Page 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
By Tim Perdue<\/div>\n
on January 3, 2001<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n

Indenting<\/h2>\n
\nAll your code should be properly indented. This is the most fundamental
\nthing you can do to improve readability. Even if you don’t comment your
\ncode, indenting will be a big help to anyone who has to read your code
\nafter you.<\/div>\n
\n
\nwhile ($x < $z) {\n\tif ($a == 1) {\n\t\techo 'A was equal to 1';\n\t} else {\n\t\tif ($b == 2) {\n\t\t\t\/\/do something\n\t\t} else {\n\t\t\t\/\/do something else\n\t\t}\n\t}\n}\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe PEAR RFC standard calls for 4 spaces, not tabs of any size, in your code.
\nI disagree with this personally and will continue to tab my code. My view is
\nthat tabs rather than spaces will create smaller files and smaller files are
\nfaster to parse, upload, download, etc etc. The other advantage to using tabs
\nis that you can set your tab size to your personal preference when viewing
\nsomeone else’s code. I used to use 8-space tabs, but recently switched to
\n4-space tabs and all my code “reformatted” automatically by just setting a
\npreference in vim.<\/div>\n
Control Structures<\/h2>\n
\nThis is pretty much common sense, but I still see an awful lot of code
\nthat is not braced for readability. If you use conditional expressions (IF statements)
\nwithout braces, not only is it less readable, but bugs can also be introduced when
\nsomeone modifies your code.<\/div>\n
Bad Example:<\/div>\n
\n
\nif ($a == 1) echo 'A was equal to 1';\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
\nThat’s pretty much illegible. It may work for you, but the person following
\nafter you won’t appreciate it at all.<\/div>\n
Less Bad Example:<\/div>\n
\n
\nif ($a == 1) \n\techo 'A was equal to 1';\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
\nNow that’s at least readable, but it’s still not maintainable. What if I want
\nan additional action to occur when $a==1? I need to add braces, and if I forget
\nto, I’ll have a bug in my code.<\/div>\n
Correct:<\/div>\n
\n
\nif (($a == 1) && ($b==2)) {\n\techo 'A was equal to 1';\n\t\/\/easily add more code\n} elseif (($a == 1) && ($b==3)) {\n\t\/\/do something\n}\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
\nNotice the space after the if<\/b> and elseif<\/b> – this helps distinguish
\nconditionals from function calls.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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By Tim Perdue on January 3, 2001 Indenting All your code should be properly indented. This is the most fundamental thing you can do to improve readability. Even if you don’t comment your code, indenting will be a big help to anyone who has to read your code after you…. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tutorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3357,"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions\/3357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpbuilder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}