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I started reading "CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development" as a novice. This book is specially targeted to anybody like me: little or no prior experience of Object Oriented Programming or the MVC approach, with couple of years procedural PHP experience, and is after something that can really take you to the next level.
I have prior experience of 2 years using Dreamweaver to build Web applications for my current employer. Dreamweaver uses a procedural approach to PHP, whereas CodeIgniter focuses on Object Oriented Programming (OOP). If you have not done any OOP before, then this book provides a good introduction.
CodeIgniter is a PHP framework that allows you to build clean and sophisticated applications using an MVC (Model View Control) approach.
Putting it in simple terms, an MVC approach provides a clean way to organise your code. Once you understand the concept and become familiar with the CodeIgniter framework, you will be building Web applications in no time.
The book was published by Packt Publishing. Like with all their books, you can download the example code from their support page. The examples are pretty easy to setup. I had no problems getting any of them to work. The details and explanations provided by the author make it very difficult to make a mistake.
The introduction was for me the hardest part to get through, as I had no prior experience with OOP, nor with the MVC approach.
I am a more hands on programmer. I learn from writing the code rather than reading about the methods. So when the book starts explaining how to use CodeIgniter to simplify common tasks, I started realizing how and why my application design would improve. This book was not just about CodeIgniter, but a new approach to efficient application development with all the hard work already done.
After you are introduced to the MVC approach, chapters are broken down into common tasks. It starts looking at how CodeIgniter works with database connections, while keeping the application code clean and writing less code.
Initially I thought it was reinventing the wheel, making me learn a new syntax to achieve the same results. However, over time, you find the application development with CodeIgniter is a lot easier because it is simple, especially when it comes to troubleshooting. You are working with a much stronger and efficient foundation when compared to not using any framework.
In the middle of the book we get a look under the hood, i.e. how CodeIgniter actually works. You will still want to write your own application classes. Here we can see how we can integrate them with CodeIgniter. Being new to OOP, I just gave a brief overview over this section, as it focused very much on the CodeIgniter "super-object", which is the root of the framework.
You may have heard about "Test Driven Development". In a nutshell, it focuses on creating a test environment before you even start writing your production code.
The idea is that you build your application and code to pass these predefined tests. It is difficult a concept to swallow initial, so I welcomed the chapter that helps understanding this approach to application design.
Once we have tested our application and we are happy with the functionality, how can we ensure we have not ended up with slow code? Easy! David Upton, the author, shows how we can easily benchmark our application using a CodeIgniter class.
Benchmarking is not always required. Smaller projects may not benefit much from speed improvements of just a fraction of a second. But if you are building an enterprise class application, optimization can make all the difference.
The CodeIgniter framework offers a lot of productivity to PHP Web developers.
The greatest benefit of buying this book is that we gain a practical understanding of where and how we can use CodeIgniter.
I have only scratched the surface of what is offered by the author. He tutors you on each section, explaining the concepts behind each CodeIgniter class or helper.
You are not overwhelmed with code, but taught valuable lessons about the MVC approach and Web application development. |
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