Architecture

In this first part of a short series, I'm going to introduce you to using the Iterator, Countable and ArrayAccess interfaces that come with the Standard PHP Library. You'll see how to implement some of the methods declared by the Iterator interface within a class that manipulates MySQL result sets via an intuitive API.
- For many PHP developers eager to apply the object-oriented...

In this first part of a five-part series, I introduce you to implementing the Data Mapper design pattern in PHP 5. This pattern attempts to solve the issue of the strong coupling that often exists between the domain objects present in an application and the underlying persistence mechanism. This benefit comes at a cost, since data mappers add a new layer of complexity. Living with this minor...

In this second part of a four-part series, I rebuild the example application developed in the previous tutorial. As you'll recall, it used a protected constructor to prevent the instantiation of the base array iterator class. In this case, a better result will be achieved by declaring the iterator abstract; still, the example demonstrates a simple utilization of a restrictive constructor in a...

This third part of a seven-part series explores the methods of the PHP Reflection API. You will learn how to take advantage of their functionality to retrieve useful information about the methods defined by a reflected class.
- One of today's most powerful approaches for retrieving information about the internal structure of classes and interfaces in PHP 5 is via the language's native...