'Starting a large PHP project. Is OOP necessary or is it just a preference?
I started learning PHP awhile ago. I guess I'm fairly okay in it. I want to write a Content Management System, just as a project for myself, however long it may take. To be more specific, a simple gaming CMS where users can log in, post clan statistics, post in a forum, have user profiles, upcoming matches etc, various other modules you can install or code yourself. It's been done before, but I feel like I would learn a lot by going through with this.
To the experienced coders:
What is required to undertake such a project?
Any framework preference?
Is OOP necessary?
Are there certain ways to go about making such a large-scale project?
I've heard of various frameworks like CakePHP, codeigniter, and Zend, but I'm not sure what I should make of it.
Solution 1:[1]
The most important step in any project is PLANNING. Plan everything you can , database (tables , columns , relations) , process-flow and such on.
Nothing is necessary but OOP is recommended because:
- You won't get lost in your own code
- Easy to edit and to add (reflexable for changes)
Cakephp , codeigniter are frameworks and they will save you lot of development time. Instead of writing classes for each type of models you have (posts , members ...) you run a simple command and it will create a basic app for your needs.
Solution 2:[2]
From my personal experience so far i would suggest you (at least) try making the system on your own since the experience and knowledge gained throughout the process of creating complex systems is by far the best hands on practice you will ever get.
Whether to use a specific framework or not is particularly up to you and whether you feel up to the task of achieving the system development on your own, since using a framework would also require learning the specific framework as well.
For OOP i would highly recommend it since it makes everything a lot easier. If you've never worked with object oriented principles before, you might find it a bit challenging at the beginning, but once you get over the learning curve you'd be more than satisfied with the result, with what you've learned and how easy and organized your whole system will look, especially when you have to make small changes or updates.
Since we are talking about a relatively large system as you suggest, i personally cant stress enough, how important planning and analysis is. Try to write down in details all the data you will need, make drafts and plan your database tables as thorough as you can since if during the process you find out that you've forgotten something or something just doesn't feel right, you might have to recreate classes, databases etc. to make it all run smoothly.
Solution 3:[3]
OOP is in the end a matter of preference, but there are a few notable advantages. The very first one that comes to mind is security. Parametized queries with mysqli, which are designed to function in an OOP kind of way, transactions, if you will have any. If you want CMS, then you will also probably have to display quite a lot of data from the database, which will require pagination. Instead of having to re-write a "procedural" pagination algorithm, you could approach everything with OOP with a single class. Ultimately, it is still a matter of preference but as far as I know, oop comes with many many advantages in real world applications. Good luck with your project!
Solution 4:[4]
I'll just reiterate what's already been said here and say this: OOP is a utility, and never a requirement. I'm an OO person myself and I tend to think easier in those terms after having done it for years, but I don't think I've come up across more than a couple of things that I don't think I could have done without OO practices (one of which being a particle effects engine, which is kind of a given).
That being said, there are definitely times where OO is more a hindrance than an boon. What you need to do is sit down and really visualize your project as a whole. When you're looking at the big picture, do you see things as encapsulated objects? Will you have one block of code that you will be using lots of times over to describe things that are similar but slightly different? Or, is your project a bit more linear where you can see most of your scripts running in the traditional "top-down" format?
Solution 5:[5]
Well, the point of OOP is to make programming more similar with the real world. In the real world, you're dealing with objects. Your job is an object of class Job, you are an object of class Employee which extends the class Person, you go home to an object of class Apartment which is contained in an object of class Building, which is contained in an object of class Block.
My point is, the point of OOP is to make life easier for you, you can designate a forum post as an Object, as you can for users and whatnot. The whole structure of data you can create in OOP is far more complex, and easy to understand than procedural PHP.
Eventually, it's all in your preference, but yes, if you asked me whether I'd recommend you use OOP on a project of this scale, I would definitely say yes.
As for your other questions:
- What is required to undertake such a project? - Planning, and lots of it. Plan ahead anything you might need (in terms of database, existing projects/classes, files, pages). Also plan in for extensibility, to add modules and tables in the future.
- Any framework preference? - I'm not a huge fan of frameworks, but I suggest you do learn the concept of MVC and single point-of-entry.
Solution 6:[6]
i think framework will help you a lot.. i mean various repetitive task can be easily omitted
and for a large project OOP is highly recommended for simplicity without OOP your code will be very evil and very hard to maintain
Solution 7:[7]
You should first look for some good framework - working from beginning is quite difficult. You should first create some kind of block diagram of necessary parts of your application and corresponding database/tables.
OOP is recommended because it could save you a lot of time.
One good framework look here: http://code.google.com/p/phpstartapp/
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow
| Solution | Source |
|---|---|
| Solution 1 | Ofir Baruch |
| Solution 2 | Kypros |
| Solution 3 | |
| Solution 4 | Nathan Cox |
| Solution 5 | Madara's Ghost |
| Solution 6 | khizar ansari |
| Solution 7 | mdakic |