PHP developers: The backbone of web applications
Although it is one of the oldest open-source scripting languages, PHP remains one of the most commonly used across the web. This server-side language is versatile, scalable, and easy to customise to fulfil any business’ needs or requirements. These attributes make it foundational to many web-based solutions, with the developers creating the building blocks upon which dynamic websites or applications are built.
Essential skills for PHP developers
Building robust backend solutions for web applications using PHP involves leveraging a mix of essential skills, understanding common frameworks, and integrating code with various databases. This means that developers must be proficient in this language and have a deep understanding of PHP syntax, features, frameworks, and libraries. Knowledge of object oriented principles (OOP) is crucial as it ensures they can write clean, reusable code. Reusable code is essential as it can significantly improve the efficiency of a website or app, and it makes it easier to maintain or scale.
Other skills include familiarity with the Model-View-Controller pattern to separate concerns and improve code maintainability, understanding and applying security best practices during development, designing and integrating RESTful APIs, and server deployment and management.
However, one of a PHP developer’s most important skills is working with databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Having an understanding of NoSQL databases like MongoDB is also useful.
PHP’s versatility allows it to seamlessly communicate with a variety of databases, and developers need to ensure they can integrate their code with these databases using extensions or libraries to create a seamless user-friendly interface. This integration is crucial for web development as it facilitates easy access to dynamic content such as images, videos, files, or other information stored on a database.
Lastly, PHP developers must be skilled in working with frameworks that provide structure, reusable components, and tools that streamline the development process.
Common PHP frameworks
Three of the most popular PHP frameworks used by developers are CodeIgniter, Laravel, and Symfony.
CodeIgniter is a lightweight framework that is easy to set up and has a small footprint. This framework has a simple toolkit for creating full-featured web applications, making it ideal for beginners needing a high performance option for smaller applications.
With its elegant syntax, powerful ORM, built-in authentication, routing, and task scheduling, Laravel is suitable for building both simple and complex web applications. It provides a broad set of plug-and-play functionalities, which helps to speed up development.
Symfony’s modularity and flexibility make it a popular choice, and this framework is also highly customisable. It’s best suited to large-scale and complex applications where robustness and flexibility are crucial and is often used in enterprise-level projects.
Building robust backend solutions
Today, PHP is the backbone of more than 75% of websites online, including giants like Facebook and Wikipedia. By combining their technical skills with frameworks like Laravel, CodeIgniter, and Symfony, PHP developers can swiftly and efficiently build reliable, secure backend solutions that power the digital presence of businesses and brands of all sizes.