Skip to Content
Beginning PHP 5.3
book

Beginning PHP 5.3

by Matt Doyle
October 2009
Beginner
836 pages
19h 37m
English
Wrox
Content preview from Beginning PHP 5.3

Chapter 15. Making Your Job Easier with PEAR

Once you start creating a few PHP Web applications, you'll find that your scripts often need to do the same tasks again and again. For example, many applications require a login/logout mechanism, and most Web applications display and process HTML forms at some point.

If you've written your applications in a modular way, using classes and functions to break them down into specific chunks of functionality, you should find that you can reuse those classes or functions across applications. For instance, the Member class you developed in Chapters 13 and 14 could easily be used to register, store, and retrieve members for any Web application.

Code reuse is important because it can save you hours of time. However, rather than reusing your own code, why not reuse someone else's? That way, you don't even have to write the code in the first place! This is where PEAR comes in. PEAR stands for the PHP Extension and Application Repository, and it's a big collection of high-quality, open-source code packages that you can freely download and use in your own applications.

When using a PEAR package, make sure that you check its license. Some package licenses let you use the package in practically any way you like; for example, you can include the code in an application that you then sell as a product. Other licenses are more restrictive.

Each package is a separately maintained class, or set of classes, for achieving a specific goal. At the time of writing, ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

PHP 5 Unleashed

PHP 5 Unleashed

John Coggeshall
PHP 7: Real World Application Development

PHP 7: Real World Application Development

Doug Bierer, Altaf Hussain, Branko Ajzele

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470413968Purchase book