NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Jeremy Campbell wrote:
> as far as background, i've been doing front end development (hand coding 
> html) for many years so i know my way around a text-editor and 
> understand a lot of the basic principles of php but i have never 
> attempted a php project on my own and am pretty hazy with anything 
> concerning databases.
> 
> thanks,
> 
> jeremy

Then you know way more than I did when I first started with PHP. I 
recommend picking some project that you have some personal interest in. 
  My first project was a self-replicating script that parsed through the 
current directory and dynamically created links to image and flash video 
files (used Jeoren Wijering's Flash Video player). It copied itself into 
any lower level directory and created a link in the dynamically 
generated page if the file existed. The names and descriptions for the 
images and videos came from an INI style text file. That script was 
always pretty shaky and by now it entirely stopped working.
My next project was writing a database backend and some additional code 
for wrapping Jeroen Wijering's Flash MP3 player into a script that 
allows me to search through my MP3s, create an XML playlist, and then 
play the list using the flash based player. Although the script still 
works, I am ebarrassed by the code. It is full of flaws that just don't 
come to play because of my setup and use.
I then got a big break and was allowed to create a bug tracking / CRM 
application for work. Although it never was used, it served me well for 
learning. Next came a new script for pics from my digital and video 
camera. I added a quite complex search function, and stored everything 
except for the files of course in a database. My goal was that I do not 
need to process anything about the pictures, such as renaming or 
rotating some of them. It was quite a challange to dive into exif, 
arrays, GD, more SQL, more queries, and other nifty stuff.

My best resources were the O'Reilly XHTML book (I doubt you need it), 
W3Schools SQL course (you can do quite a bit with very primitive select, 
insert, and update queries), php.net (be cautious of the user 
contributions, some of them send you down the wrong path), anything that 
Google barfed up and above all, no, wayyyyyy above all the folks here on 
the NYPHP list.

I have no training in web or GUI design (and that shows unfortunately), 
I have no training in programming, and until I came across PHP 
absolutely hated coding. I did work for over six years as software 
tester, supporter, and tech writer in a software engineering team, which 
did help quite a bit.

In any case, if I can do it, you can for sure! Just pick something, get 
a very good idea of what you want the script to do in the end, and then 
just go at it.

When you are looking for a good IDE that doesn't cost a thing, ask the 
nice folks at Waterproof.fr if you can have a personal license. Their 
IDE is really nice, but the debugger implementation isn't so hot. Same 
applies for all the others except for NuSphere. And don't even bother 
with the Zend IDE. Their app just doesn't make any sense.

David