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PHP 5.3 and beyond, book suggestions
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:02 am
by Luke
Hello old friends! It's been a long time. I really need to start hanging around here again. But anyway, to get to the point, I've taken quite an extensive vacation from PHP and I'm looking to dive back into it. Last I worked with PHP at any kind of professional level would have been mid-2010. I haven't really gotten to play around with namespaces much, or any of the other really cool stuff that's come about in 5.3 and beyond. I'm looking for suggestions for a great book for advanced PHP programmers who are just looking to brush up and learn all the cool new stuff since 5.3 came out. I have poked around on Amazon and was rather disappointed in what I found. Basically the only newer books I could find were "learning PHP". No advanced/expert/OOP/design patterns stuff newer than like 2005. Can anybody suggest something for me? Even if it isn't a book. I mean, I prefer books, but all suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
Re: PHP 5.3 and beyond, book suggestions
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:04 am
by Luke
What would be really great is to see examples of how namespaces are being used since they were added. How autoloading works with them, best practices, as well as cool stuff that's being done with anonymous functions and all that jive. I really just want to see how people are using the new features.
Re: PHP 5.3 and beyond, book suggestions
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:18 am
by requinix
If you're looking for examples, try frameworks that are written for 5.3 and above. Like Symfony2 requires 5.3.3 which suggests (I don't use it) that it needs things like namespaces and closures (anonymous functions).
In your shoes I'd probably check the PHP 5 changelog, look for features that seem interesting (5.3, .4, .5, and the in-alpha .6 all introduce lots of features - much more than previous minor releases have), check the documentation, and start playing around. As for best practices I'd look to see how other languages use the features: namespaces like C#, closures like Javascript, and I think they've borrowed more than a couple ideas from Python.
Re: PHP 5.3 and beyond, book suggestions
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:58 am
by Celauran
Poke around the Symfony 2 and Laravel 4 code bases. Lots of good stuff going on there.
Re: PHP 5.3 and beyond, book suggestions
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:13 am
by matthijs
Hi Luke, welcome back
I don't have any book suggestions for you, other then you probably already know, since most of the books I have bought are a bit older already. Seems there's not many advanced books on PHP being published. Most are just "how to build my first php/mysql site in PHP" kind.
I do follow some developers' blogs in my feedlist, people who regularly write about the more advanced stuff. If you check out
http://www.phpdeveloper.org/
this site aggragates most PHP blogs
Re: PHP 5.3 and beyond, book suggestions
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 12:52 pm
by Luke
Excellent! Thanks for the suggestions, guys. These ideas should definitely get me on the right track!

I'm going to try to stick around for a while. I am a little surprised I am still a Mod here. It's been so long since I even signed in that I'm surprised I haven't been fired. But... since I'm still a mod, I will try to act like one and start helping out again
