Making the Most of Modern PHP in Drupal 7

MAKINGTHE MOST
OF MODERN PHP
Ryan Szrama, Commerce Guys
DrupalCamp Asheville 2015

RUN FASTER,
JUMP HIGHER
… when you use PHP
the right way. 
http://www.phptherightway.com

• Deliver more capable projects in less time.
• Improve the quality of your Drupal modules.
• Prepare yourself / your team for Drupal 8.

My real world example:
Integrating aTaxonomy Web Service
API integration, taxonomy term
creation, and tag management.

My real world example:
Integrating aTaxonomy Web Service
Delivered as a PHP library integrated
into Drupal in 50% of the estimate.

MODERN PHP IS
OBJECT ORIENTED
• Interfaces, Classes, Inheritance, Namespaces,Traits
• Class autoloading based on namespaces
• Object oriented design patterns are everywhere;
for example, consider Dependency Injection…

<?php
// In this case, Cars can only use
// a single type of engine.
class Car {
protected $engine;
function __construct() {
$this->engine = new Engine();
}
}
$car = new Car();

<?php
class Car {
protected $engine;
function __construct($engine) {
$this->engine = $engine;
}
}
// Use whatever engine you want.
$engine = new NormalEngine();
$car = new Car($engine);
$engine = new TurboEngine();
$turboCar = new Car($engine);

<?php
// Quick example of a dependency injection
// container in a Slim 3.x app.
include 'vendor/autoload.php';
$container = new SlimContainer();
$container['thing'] = function($container) {
return (object) array('doer' => 'done');
};
$app = new SlimApp($container);
echo $app->thing->doer;

MODERN PHP USES
INTEROPERABLE LIBRARIES
• The PHP Framework Interoperability Group
(PHP-FIG) discusses and ratiﬁes PHP Standards
Recommendations (PSRs).
• PSRs are independent standards, not successive
levels of compliance. (e.g. PSR-4 deprecates PSR-0,
and a project can be PSR-2 without anything else.)

MODERN PHP USES
INTEROPERABLE LIBRARIES
• PSR-4 (or PSR-0):Autoloading
• PSR-1 / PSR-2: Coding standards
• PSR-3: Logging interface
• PSR-7: HTTP Request and Response interfaces
• Learn more at: http://www.php-ﬁg.org

See them in use in Slim 3.x, created by Josh Lockhart
(a.k.a. @codeguy), author of Modern PHP
and PHP the Right Way.
http://www.phptherightway.com

<?php
// A smaller codebase than Drupal’s is
// easier to digest while learning.
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new SlimApp();
$app->get('/', function($request,
$response, $args) {
echo 'Hello, world!';
});
$app->run();

Read more: http://ryanszrama.com/topics/slim
In fact, learning to develop with Slim 3.x helped me
better understand essential concepts in Drupal 8.

COMMERCE 2.X IS BUILT ON
STANDALONE LIBRARIES
• commerceguys/intl (Currency formatting)
• commerceguys/addressing (Address formatting)
• commerceguys/zone (Address grouping)
• commerceguys/enum (Enumeration data structure)
• commerceguys/tax (Tax management)

MODERN PHP
USES COMPOSER
• Dependency management
tool; functionally equivalent
to .info ﬁles + drush make.
• Project information is
sourced from packagist.org.
• Excellent built-in support
for Packagist in GitHub.

{
“name”: “rszrama/negotiation-middleware”,
“type”: “library”,
“license”: “MIT”,
“require”: {
“php”: “>=5.4.0”,
“psr/http-message”: “1.0”,
“willdurand/negotiation”: “2.0.0-alpha1”
},
“autoload”: {
“psr-4”: {
“NegotiationMiddleware”: “src”
}
}
}

https://www.previousnext.com.au/blog/drupal-8-now-phpunit-tests-drupal-7
Bonus points: dig into PHPUnit to automate unit
testing your code… even on Drupal 7.

MODERN PHP IN DRUPAL 7
• Write API integrations and data modeling /
manipulation functions as standalone libraries.
• Ensure those libraries do not depend on Drupal.
• Use adapter classes or dependency injection to
make use of that code inside of Drupal.

• Drupal 7 only requires PHP 5.2.x, so its core
autoloading API does not support namespaces.
• Instead use Composer / the Composer Manager
module to manage your project dependencies.
• At least use PSR-4; to reach the larger PHP world,
consider using PSR-2 and the MIT license.

• Use the Standard PHP Library’s exception classes
or create your own more speciﬁc exceptions.
• Use try / catch to avoid crippling fatal errors…
EntityMetadataWrapper exceptions, anyone?
• Speaking of the SPL, check out the various data
structures it provides out of the box!

http://www.slimframework.com
If your project has components that don’t require a
full Drupal bootstrap, consider Slim 3.x or a similar
micro-framework to get off the Drupal island.

Learn and adopt the language improvements, tools,
and design principles of modern PHP to become a
better Drupal developer today.
Questions? Find me onTwitter: @ryanszrama

Making the Most of Modern PHP in Drupal 7

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