Objectifying PHP

Submitted by Crell on June 9, 2009 - 17:57

Your session in a few words:

Introduction to Object-Oriented development in PHP

Track:

Code it, test it, deploy it

Session Type:

Lecture

Level of expertise:

Beginner

Language:

English

After years of being a strictly-procedural framework, Drupal is starting to embrace object-oriented programming in a big way. Views is now mostly object-oriented. The Drupal 7 database layer is entirely object-oriented, with a thin procedural veneer. Unit testing is object-oriented. Various other efforts at media handling, plugins and handlers, and more are leveraging objects.

Of course, Drupal has attracted lots of developers who may not understand object-oriented coding, and how to do it well. This session will act as an introduction to the concepts behind objects, classes, interfaces, and other mainstays of PHP object-oriented development. It will start with the basics of the concept of object-oriented programming and cover the syntax, theory, and "how to not do it wrong".

If your eyes cross when seeing code like this:

$plugin->doSomething()->doSomethingElse($plugin);

then this session is for you.

Conference is sold out

Larry Garfield

After four years working with Drupal, Larry Garfield is the Senior Lead of Programming at Palantir.net. He also serves as the Director of Legal Affairs for the Drupal Association, and since 2008 has been the Drupal database system maintainer. He also maintains a number of modules, including several Views plugins. Although object-oriented development was not the main goal of the 2007 GoPHP5 initiative that Larry spearheaded, it was a side-effect that has now opened the OO floodgates. Larry feels horribly guilty about that and believes that he must do penance by teaching the world how to use objects safely before more horrific OO code is unleashed on an unsuspecting web.