Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Summary of book reading on Professional LAMP web development:
This book is a good read even for those familiar with any part of the stack.
The changes introduced in PHP5 are listed as 1) passing variables based on reference by default as opposed to passing by value by default in PHP4.
2) In Php4 we had set_error_handler() to define a user function for error handling. In PHP5, we have the same try-catch-throw semantics as in other languages.
3) There is a builtin Exception class and it has message, code, file and line information.
4) Interfaces have been added to PHP5 and classes can implement multiple interfaces.
5) The Standard Public Library in PHP5 has introduced new set of classes and interfaces. Iterator class along with DirectoryIterator, RecursiveIterator and ArrayIterator are now available.
6) Constructors and destructors by way of __construct() and __destruct() have been added
7) Access modifiers, final, static abstract can be added to control your classes.
8) Instead of overload() in PHP4, we can now call a builtin methods.
MySQL has also some advanced features. For example, we can query multiple tables, do full-text searching, control access, analyze the database and maintain it. Tools such as PhpMyAdmin  and MySQL Administrator GUI tool are available for some of these chores. The query text generated from these tools can give a better understanding of what the tool or the application does with the database.
Apache comes with the following features : URL rewriting, URL spell checking, content compression, using MySQL with Apache, Apache and SSL, Apache as a file repository and Summary.
Site Security can be tightened with the following features : controlling access, website attacks, keeping the system current and updated, updating PEAR and PECL packages installed with PHP, writing cron job to do automatic updates and by  reducing the likelihood of register_globals exploit or SQL Injection attack. SQL exploits are avoided by initializing all variables.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment