Every company follows a different coding standard based on their
best practices. Coding standard is required because there may be many
developers working on different modules so if they will start inventing their
own standards then source will become very un-manageable and it will become difficult
to maintain that source code in future.
Here are several reasons why to use coding specifications:
- Your peer
programmers have to understand the code you produce. A coding standard
acts as the blueprint for all the team to decipher the code.
- Simplicity and
clarity achieved by consistent coding saves you from common mistakes.
- If you revise your
code after some time then it becomes easy to understand that code.
- Its industry
standard to follow a particular standard to being more quality in
software.
There are few guidelines which can be followed while coding in
PHP.
- Indenting and Line Length - Use an
indent of 4 spaces and don't use any tab because different computers use
different setting for tab. It is recommended to keep lines at
approximately 75-85 characters long for better code readability.
- Control Structures - These include if, for,
while, switch, etc. Control statements should have one space between the
control keyword and opening parenthesis, to distinguish them from function
calls. You are strongly encouraged to always use curly braces even in
situations where they are technically optional.
- Function
Calls -
Functions should be called with no spaces between the function name, the
opening parenthesis, and the first parameter; spaces between commas and
each parameter, and no space between the last parameter, the closing
parenthesis, and the semicolon. Here's an example:
|
$var =
foo($bar, $baz, $quux);
|
- Function
Definitions -
Function declarations follow the "BSD/Allman style":
|
function
fooFunction($arg1, $arg2 = '')
{
if (condition) {
statement;
}
return $val;
}
|
- Comments - C style comments
(/* */) and standard C++ comments (//) are both fine. Use of Perl/shell
style comments (#) is discouraged.
- PHP
Code Tags - Always use <?php ?> to
delimit PHP code, not the <? ?> shorthand. This is required for PHP
compliance and is also the most portable way to include PHP code on
differing operating systems and setups.
- Variable
Names -
- Use all
lower case letters
- Use '_' as
the word separator.
- Global
variables should be prepended with a 'g'.
- Global
constants should be all caps with '_' separators.
- Static
variables may be prepended with 's'.
- Make
Functions Reentrant - Functions should not keep
static variables that prevent a function from being reentrant.
- Alignment
of Declaration Blocks - Block of declarations
should be aligned.
- One
Statement Per Line - There should be only one
statement per line unless the statements are very closely related.
- Short
Methods or Functions -
Methods should limit themselves to a single page of code.
There could be many more points which should be considered while
writing your PHP program. Over all intension should be to be consistent
throughout of the code programming and it will be possible only when you will
follow any coding standard. You can device your own standard if you like
something different.
