Nicollet.Net

So, you know PHP. You’ve already programmed small websites with it, read a few tutorials about various things, and perhaps even a book or two, or you’ve had a course as part of your curriculum.

And you’re looking to improve your knowledge of the PHP language, of the classic design patterns used by expert PHP developers, of the many functions in the standard library and the pitfalls of each.

This is what I wrote this section for: to give a quick overview of the PHP language by developing JITBrain, a small issue tracking website—kind of a mix between a bug tracking website and a todo-list website. It is still being written and steadily increasing in size. At any time, you can check out the current status of JITBrain here:

http://jitbrain.nicollet.net

This tutorial assumes that you already know the basics of the PHP language. In particular, you should already be able to run PHP scripts, install a new database, use an Apache server and so on. I’m not trying to teach you PHP, only to explain how to make your code safe, elegant and user-friendly.

And before we start, a little word on intellectual property: this article is copyrighted, but the code inside is in the public domain, so you may borrow it and use it as you see fit. Also, not all of it has been tested or matches the final implementation of JITBrain, so be careful.