Mastering PHP 7

Design, configure, build, and test professional web

applications in PHP 7

Branko Ajzele

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Mastering PHP 7
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2017

Production reference: 1220617

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-281-4

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 Credits

Author Copy Editor

Branko Ajzele Safis Editing

Reviewers Project Coordinator

Martin Beaudry Vaidehi Sawant

Andrew Caya

Alexandru-Emil Lupu

Mario Magdic

Commissioning Editor Proofreader

Kunal Parikh Safis Editing

Acquisition Editor Indexer

Chaitanya Nair Pratik Shirodkar

Content Development Editor Production Coordinator

Siddhi Chavan Nilesh Mohite

Technical Editor

Dhiraj Chandanshive
 About the Author
Branko Ajzele is an internationally respected and highly accomplished software developer,
book author, solution specialist, consultant, and team leader.

Strong technical knowledge coupled with the ability to communicate those technicalities
frequently and clearly with strong direction has enabled him to architect, develop, and
launch numerous successful businesses. He often feels comfortable proposing alternatives
to demands that he feels can be improved, even when it means pulling a late shift to meet
deadlines.

He holds several respected IT certifications, such as Zend Certified PHP Engineer, Magento
Certified Developer, Magento Certified Developer Plus, Magento Certified Solution
Specialist, and a few more.

Branko was crowned E-commerce Developer of the Year by Digital Entrepreneur Awards in
October 2014 for his excellent knowledge and expertise in e-commerce development. His
work is second to none, and he is truly dedicated to helping fellow developers around the
world.

He currently works as a full-time contractor for Lab Lateral Ltd, an award-winning team of
innovative thinkers, artists, and developers specializing in customer-centric websites,
digital consultancy, and marketing. Here, he holds the role of a lead developer and the head
of Lab's Croatia office.

The book, Instant E-Commerce with Magento: Build a Shop, by Packt was his first Magento-
related book oriented toward Magento newcomers, after which he decided to write his
second book, Getting Started with Magento Extension Development. The third book, Magento 2
Developers Guide, was released days after the official Magento 2 release. His fourth book,
Modular Programming with PHP 7, describes modular design techniques to help developers
build readable, manageable, reusable, and more efficient code, and doing so on a mini web
shop application written in the Symfony framework.
 About the Reviewers
Martin Beaudry started his programming career 7 years ago by creating a software in C
after going through the K&R book. He then switched to PHP to work as a web developer,
becoming a Zend Certified PHP Engineer and Zend Certified Architect along the way.
Before learning computer languages, he worked with human ones as a professional
translator and editor.

Martin works in his own start-up and is one of Linux for PHP's contributors.

I want to thank my friend, Andrew Caya, for teaching me everything I needed to know to
review this book.

Andrew Caya discovered his passion for computers at the age of 11 and started
programming in GW-BASIC and QBASIC in the early 90s. He earned a master’s degree in
Information Science and master's short program in public administration. After doing some
software development in C, C++, and Perl, and some Linux system administration, he
became a PHP developer more than 7 years ago. He is also a Zend Certified PHP Engineer
and a Zend Certified Architect.

He is the creator of Linux for PHP, a lightweight, Docker-based, custom Linux project that
allows PHP developers to easily compile and use recent versions of PHP in a variety of
ways. He is also the lead developer of a popular Joomla! extension and has the great
pleasure of contributing code to many open source projects.

He is currently a professional contract programmer in Montreal, Canada, a technical

reviewer for Packt, and a loving husband and father.

Alexandru-Emil Lupu has about 10 years experience in the Web Development area. During
this time, he got a lot of skills from the implementation of e-commerce platforms and
presentation sites' code writing to online games. He is one of the developers who are
constantly learning new programming languages, and he has no problem in understanding
Ruby, PHP, Python, JavaScript, and Java code.
Alexandru is very passionate about programming and computer science. When he was
young, he did not own a computer or an Internet connection (hard to believe, but true). He
would go to an Internet cafe in order to read about his programming problems and would
then struggle to implement them at home. He fondly remembers those days and hopes he's
the same guy from 10 years ago with much more experience. For him, passion is the word
that describes the challenge he faced while learning. He says it was not easy to be a
youngster and one who was willing to learn new stuff. Coming home at 2-3 A.M.,
determined to install Linux just to learn about it, was not as easy as it sounds. He had a
Pentium I at 133 MHz in the Pentium IV in the 1800 MHz era!

He is constantly learning and likes to stay close to well-trained and passionate people who
better motivate him every day. This is the reason he joined the eJobs team to face a
challenge. He likes teams who work intelligently and are energetic.

Alexandru is a Certified Scrum Master and is passionate about Agile Development. His
experience also includes 3 years as a Ruby on Rails developer and CTO at 2Performant
Network (2Parale), 4 years at eRepublik.com, an online game, during which he was
responsible for a long list of tasks, including feature development, performance
optimization, and he was also the tech lead for an internal project. He has learned the hard
way the necessary skills to fulfill his day-to-day tasks at 2Performant.com and gained all the
experience he needed to face new kind of challenges at eJobs.ro.

In his little free time, he also develops small personal projects. If he still has spare time, he
reads some technical or project management books or articles. When he is relaxing, he
watches thriller movies and also likes playing shooter or strategy games.

He doesn't talk too much, but he is willing to teach programming to others. If you meet him
over a coffee, prepare yourself to be entertained--he likes to tell a lot of contextual jokes.

You can interact with him at http://github.com/alecslupu.

Mario Magdic is a full-stack software developer originally from Croatia and currently
residing in Dublin, Ireland, where he moved 2 years ago to work for a FinTech company.
He was first introduced to the wonderful world of software development in a high school
programming class and decided to make it his career.

During his career, he has had an opportunity to work with various technologies and
programming languages and is always happy to improve and learn new things.