When writing an application in PHP, we may frequently write functions that just handle a specific problem to save time or meet our deadlines. It simply means focusing on the tree rather than the wider forest.
Then, when a very similar issue occurs, we can just copy and paste the previous answer, which will result in a linear increase in the number of lines of code in the project relative to the number of problems that need to be solved.
If you follow this approach for a while, the project will get bulky and start having performance problems. The new team members won’t understand how the logic works, and errors will be introduced with the least effort possible.
However, this does not have to be the case. Several features support the PHP programming language’s Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm. These features make it possible to effectively manage the complexity of our code, which in turn makes it possible to have a lean application, the size of which grows at a slower rate than the number of problems to solve.
In this article, we will tour some of PHP’s most important OOP concepts and show how they can be used.
Use of design patterns
Design patterns help find standardized solutions to a variety of problems. These are descriptions of general, reusable solutions to numerous difficulties that frequently arise while designing apps. There are implementations of design patterns available for every language, including PHP.
The Model-View-Controller architecture allows the application’s layers to be decoupled from one another.
MVC is a great paradigm for building large-scale applications because its separation of the front and the backend layers enables the assignment of the most appropriate team member to handle each part of the application. If you find this hard to understand, various examples of MVC implementations for PHP can be found online.
The inheritance of objects
The fundamental building blocks of object-oriented programming are known as classes and objects. The creation of highly customizable components, which implement a certain functionality and can communicate with other components, is made possible by classes and objects. The reusability of code is achieved by modifying the values of the encapsulated properties of the class. Through inheritance, we can either override or extend the behaviour of the inherited members. Modelling the application through classes makes it less expensive to test and maintain the application because specific features can be decoupled from the application and managed on their own. Additionally, modelling the application through classes increases developer productivity.
Code reusing through the use of Traits
Through class inheritance, it is impossible to reuse code from classes that do not belong to the same class hierarchy. Traits are a method that fills this gap and makes it possible to reuse code among classes that would not normally be considered linked to one another. In the same way, a class can define its attributes and functions; a trait can do the same thing; however, in contrast to a class, it cannot be instantiated. Instead, during compilation, the code included within a trait gets copied into the class doing the composition.
Contracts are defined by their interfaces.
Interfaces make it possible to divorce the actual implementation of functionality from the declaration of its purpose in terms of what it should be able to perform. When it comes down to it, we might not need to know how something is done to use functionality. As a result, interfaces contribute to the definition of contracts between components. Modularity enables the application to be simply composed of components interacting with each other.
Conclusion
PHP has become an exceptionally strong language for building web applications, particularly after the release of version 7.0. It is also exceedingly versatile and resilient. In this article, we went over its most important features for constructing applications in a modular fashion and several strategies for getting the most out of object-oriented programming. We believe that this will help you achieve your goal of building large-scale applications that are simple to modify and maintain over the long term.
