Design Patterns and PHP 5
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Last week, we began our overview of the object-oriented features of PHP 5. This week, we will start discussing design patterns. This article, the second of several parts, is excerpted from chapter two of the book
Advanced PHP Programming, written by George Schlossnagle (Sams; ISBN: 0672325616).
A Brief Introduction to Design Patterns
You have likely heard of design patterns, but you might not know what they are. Design patterns are generalized solutions to classes of problems that software developers encounter frequently.
If you've programmed for a long time, you have most likely needed to adapt a library to be accessible via an alternative API. You're not alone. This is a common problem, and although there is not a general solution that solves all such problems, people have recognized this type of problem and its varying solutions as being recurrent. The fundamental idea of design patterns is that problems and their corresponding solutions tend to follow repeatable patterns.
Design patterns suffer greatly from being overhyped. For years I dismissed design patterns without real consideration. My problems were unique and complex, I thought—they would not fit a mold. This was really short-sighted of me.
Design patterns provide a vocabulary for identification and classification of problems. In Egyptian mythology, deities and other entities had secret names, and if you could discover those names, you could control the deities' and entities' power. Design problems are very similar in nature. If you can discern a problem's true nature and associate it with a known set of analogous (solved) problems, you are most of the way to solving it.
To claim that a single chapter on design patterns is in any way complete would be ridiculous. The following sections explore a few patterns, mainly as a vehicle for showcasing some of the advanced OO techniques available in PHP.
Next: The Adaptor Pattern >>
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 This article is excerpted from chapter two of the book Advanced PHP Programming, written by George Schlossnagle (Sams; ISBN: 0672325616). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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