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[Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:17 pm
by jeffrydell
This IS a paid position.

I need a mentor / guide to assist in building an OOP version of a web app which I originally designed and implemented two years ago (procedural PHP at the time).

Despite my efforts to learn through online articles, I have not gotten my head around how to approach this rather substantial project using OOP constructs. Most of the material I have read does a fine job of teaching the reader how to build an elaborate "Hello World", but then that's it - you're on your own.

So I need a guide. I'm willing to pay for your time. Someone who will read through the project, offer design suggestions, and explain syntax / how to's / best practices. Please don't bother to reply if all you are about to suggest is "post it to a forum and we'll all work on it together." I'm not interested in development by committee or any of the snarky comments that can get posted by Bobby Big-Brains who find satisfaction in belittling 'newbies'. I want to pay you for your time, expertise, and direction.

If interested and an effective communicator - please reply so we can make contact and I can fill you in on the details of the project. With more info about what I am attempting, we can both evaluate whether we have a good match.

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:13 pm
by Benjamin
I don't think you are as lost as you think you are. If you were to start rebuilding the site using a great framework such as symfony, it will pretty much force you to put everything in the right place. If I was to seek help from someone on here regarding this however, it would be arborint.

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:32 am
by jeffrydell
ArborInt certainly is knowledgeable. Thanks for the feedback.

I looked at Symphony, interesting - but it appears to be a pretty substantial learning curve.

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:37 pm
by Christopher
Well thank you for the undeserved compliments. :oops: I don't have time for another job, but you could volunteer for Skeleton. We are always short on people with time and there is a lot on the To Do list. It is all pretty hardcore, patterns based, OOP programming where the why is often more important than the what. So you would gain understanding of what's behind many implementation decisions. I know that Matthijs and I were working through an example application before getting busy with other things. That might be a good excuse to learn the basics of a controller based application (which are the same in most major frameworks). There are also some standard modules that need a cleanup pass (e.g. DB) which would get you thinking about their design. And there is work like refactoring and documentation that you could do for "pay".

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:00 pm
by Benjamin
jeffrydell wrote:I looked at Symphony, interesting - but it appears to be a pretty substantial learning curve.
Well I'd be lying if I said that there isn't a somewhat steep learning curve. It's nothing you can't do though. It's definitely worth learning.

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 6:06 am
by jeffrydell
astions wrote:It's nothing you can't do though.
Exactly what I was told 18 months ago about OOP php on this very same website - perhaps even on this same Board, yet here I am - still looking for help. THE reason I'm looking for someone to be a bit of a guide - I'm still not 'getting it'. Apparently I've developed a learning disability over the years because after all that reading, I'm STILL not understanding how to break this project of mine down in to classes and I STILL don't really know where to start.

If I'm going to be spending time learning more it's going to be on the project that will actually produce some income and it's not going to be on how to use an application that writes applications. That, in my eyes, is a bit absurd.

Perhaps we (the php community) should be thinking more in terms of how we can simplify things so we don't NEED software to write the apps for us. As things are trending now, php will soon be saying "I'm sorry Dave ... I can't do that for you."

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:51 pm
by Benjamin
Ok, I'm sorry if I am annoying you. Essentially it simply creates classes for each database table. These are your models. That's the barebones jist of it.

Now, it also creates form classes for each table, but let's not worry about that right now.

Take a users table for example. With the generated code, this is how you create a new user:

Code: Select all

 
$u = new User();
$u->setName('bob');
$u->save();
 
It doesn't write the application for you, as much as it writes a lot of the code that HAS to be there.

If you don't want to learn a symfony, that's cool, I understand. Creating classes for each table is a really good starting point.

In symfony you would also have Peer classes. These contain static methods for retrieving or performing certain things. Here's an example:

Code: Select all

 
$users = UserPeer::getAllSuspended();
 
foreach ($users as $user) {
    echo $user->getName();
}
 
Hope that gives you a good starting point.

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:54 pm
by jeffrydell
Annoying - certainly not. And the information is helpful, just an avenue I don't wish to pursue at this time. I need to learn the basics and application of OOP in php - which seem to me would be much more fully & richly implanted in this withering old cranium if I actually DO IT rather than skirting the issue by using an application to develop my project.

Somewhere down the road it MAY prove to be a good tool in the toolbox (like phpMaker, which I use to do a lot of website back-end development). But for now, I need to sit down with a keyboard and wear out my {, }, and ; keys. That's how I'm going to 'get' this.

Thanks for the info.

Re: [Job] OOP PHP Mentor Needed - Online

Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 3:15 pm
by chinstroker
If you're still looking for some help, I'd be happy to talk more about the detail with you. I've got 10 years' experience of building scalable PHP websites including using Propel (which forms part of Symfony), but we could also talk in general about OOP and how different parts of your code might fit together.

Let me know if you're interested.