Ness College PHP Web Applications Development Course #1 INFO
Dear Students,
This post will be updated concurrently with our course, starting on Wednesday May 27th 2009.
Our course includes 20 meetings and is composed of the following small separated courses (modules) available at http://xperato.abelski.com:
Introduction to Procedural Programming
Introduction to The Internet
SQL Fundamentals
Introduction to XHTML
CSS Fundamentals
Introduction to MySQL
PHP Fundamentals
Introduction to OOP
PHP Security
PHP Web Services
PHP Zend Framework
Open Source Projects Overview
The first 5 meetings set the required fundamental knowledge for learning PHP. These 5 meetings cover the following topics:
May 27th, 2009 – 1st Meeting
Introduction to Procedural Programming
Computer Hardware Structure, Memory Types, Binary Base, Simple Variables, Input & Output, Arrays, The “if” & “if else” Control Statements, The “while” & “do..while” Loops and Functions.
June 3rd, 2009 – 2nd Meeting
Introduction to Procedural Programming
Recursive Functions, Sorting Algorithms and Software Development Life Cycle.
Introduction to The Internet
Internet History, The Web, HTTP Protocol, Web Services and Websites.
June 10th, 2009 – 3rd Meeting
Introduction to Procedural Programming
Sophisticated procedural algorithm problems.
Introduction to XHTML
Introduction, Headings, Paragraphs, Styles and Images.
June 17th, 2009 – 4th Meeting
Introduction to XHTML
Links, Tables, Lists, Forms, Colors and Frams.
CSS Fundamentals
Introduction, Background, Text, Font, Border, Outline, Margin, Padding, List, Table, Dimension, Classification, Positioning and Images.
June 24th, 2009 – 5th Meeting
SQL Fundamentals
SQL Basic Concepts, Rational Database Objects and Data Manipulation Language.
MySQL
The MySQL Database, The Installation Guide and MySQL Query Browser.
The rest of the course (remaining 14 meetings) focus on PHP. These 14 meetings cover the following topics:
June 29th, 2009 – 6th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Introduction to PHP, PHP Basics
July 6th, 2009 – 7th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
PHP Basics
July 13th, 2009 – 8th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Functions
Introduction to OOP
Introduction, Objects & Classes, Class Members, Encapsulation
PHP Fundamentals
PHP OOP
July 20th, 2009 – 9th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Arrays
July 27th, 2009 – 10th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Strings, Regular Expressions, Web Forms
August 3rd, 2009 – 11th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Sessions Management
PHP Fundamentals
HTTP Headers
August 10th, 2009 – 12th Meeting
Introduction to OOP
Inheritance, Overriding Methods, Abstract Class, Interface, Objects Relationships
PHP Fundamentals
PHP OOP
August 17th, 2009 – 13th Meeting
Open Source Code Projects
Common Architectures, Joomla, WordPress & Moodle.
August 24th, 2009 – 14th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Exceptions Handling and Reflection.
August 31th, 2009 – 15th Meeting
Strength Meeting
PHP Fundamental Topics.
September 7th, 2009 – 16th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
Database Connectivity.
September 14th, 2009 – 17th Meeting
PHP Fundamentals
PHP Standard Library, Networking and Accessing Files.
September 21th, 2009 – 18th Meeting
PHP Security
Common Practices, Website Security, Database Security, Session Security, Filesystem Security and Shared Hosting.
October 14th, 2009 – 19th Meeting
PHP Web Services
PHP & XML Overview, Document Object Model (DOM), Simple API for XML (SAX), Web Distributed Data Exchange (WDDX), Representational State Transfer (REST) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
October 20th, 2009 – 20th Meeting
PHP Zend Framework
Ajax Capabilities, Database Management, Authantication & Authorization, Creating Web Forms, Email Based Components, Web Services Mash Ups and Deployment Consideration.
Regards,
Haim.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:58 am
[...] פוסט עדכני ומפורט אשר מתאר את קורס ה-PHP אשר אני מעביר במכללת נס (מחזור ראשון) החל מה-27/5/2009 מופיע בבלוג שלי בגירסתו באנגלית בכתובת ה-URL הבאה: http://www.lifemichael.com/en/?p=548. [...]
May 29th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Dear Students,
Following the first meeting I have just uploaded on your eLearning supportive environment (ness.abelski.com) solutions for the following assignemnts: Variables Swap, Variables Swap Challenge, Difference Calculation, Sum Calculation, Multiplication Calculation, Simple Integer Array, Circle Perimeter, Circle Area, Rectangle Perimeter, Rectangle Area, Rectangle Area Function and Rectangle Perimeter Function. Please note that each solution includes two files. The first is a JPG simple image file and the second is one you can open and edit using the Diagram Designer software.
Hag Sameach!
Haim.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Dear Students, I am now in the process of uploading the solutions we overviewed and created during our 2nd meeting. I expect to complete uploading these solutions within the next coming 24 hours. Following our 2nd meetings (as promissed during the lesson) I am hereto providing you with additional resources relevant for the topics we discussed.
Agile Methodologies
I recommend you to check my post at http://www.lifemichael.com/en/?p=35. It includes various presentations that provide more information about Agile Methodologies and refer a lecture I gave in Tel-Aviv university last year. In addition, please note that relevant course (Agile Methodologies) you can find at http://ness.abelski.com through which you can enjoy various relevant video clips as well as additional resources.
Domain Registration
Regarding the possibilities to register domains in the israeli market please check http://www.isoc.org.il where you can find a list of approved domain names registers in Israel. Regarding international domains registration I recommend on checking the following sites: http://www.joker.com, http://www.dynadot.com. I work with them for some time. In general and unlike other registers I haven’t had any special problems working with them.
Hosting Service
There are lots hosting services companies world wide. Based on my experience it is highly important to choose one with a good reputation… working with the wrong company can ends very badly. One hosting company I recommend to explore working with is http://www.eapps.com. I work with them for years. So far I am pretty much satisfied.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Also Great Price for Israeli Domains (co.il) is in this website http://www.domainthenet.co.il
Hosting Service with great price and fast hosting is here. I have 2.5 years of experience with this companey. Great Support and very Stable one
http://www.cirtexhosting.com/.
Good luck
June 4th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Dear Students, Our next meeting (3rd meeting of our course) will include two parts. The first part will conclude the “flow chart diagrams” part of our course (“Introduction to Procedural Programming”). The second part of our next meeting will be devoted for XHTML (“Introduction to XHTML”). We will complete the XHTML topic (“Introduction to XHTML”) in our 4th meeting.
Introduction to Procedural Programming
Towards our next meeting I have just uploaded three new assignments at ness.abelski.com: Average Function, Magic Number Function and Decimal To Binary Function. The first should be fairly simple to complete (if you feel a solution is required please let me know and I will upload one on our site). The two other assignments should be a bit more difficult and we will solve them together in class. In any case, I recommend you to try and solve them on your end before we meet. In addition, I recommend you to go over everything we did so far (regarding flow chart diagrams) and come ready to class with every question you have… so we could clarify all issues, answer all questions and ensure your understanding of this topic.
Introduction to XHTML
You can already find the slides of the “Introduction to XHTML” course at ness.abelski.com. I recommend to take a look at those slides before we meet. It will ease your way into this topic (especially if it is a new topic for you).
June 6th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
1.Yossi commented about domainthenet.com i bought my domain there, and they are OK but not great. their web interface to manage the domain is very poor, not compatible with firefox and there are important features missing. if i would need to choose a domain registar today I’d go with godady.com for all my domain needs.
2.attaching a link to an interesting interview with Zeev soresky (PHP co-founder/develpoer)enjoy..
http://ia301515.us.archive.org/3/items/OriandRanreversim19_php/reversim19_php.mp3
June 8th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Hi Yaniv, Thanks for the link to this interesting interview with Zeev Soresky. It seems to be an interview out of many others delivered over skype… do you know how to get all of those other interviews… ?
June 8th, 2009 at 6:39 am
sure
it’s from Hebrew podcast named “reverse with platform” aiming to software developers and tech geeks in general, you can download all previous podcast and register to their RSS feed here:
http://www.reversim.com/
cheers
June 9th, 2009 at 4:09 am
Haim,
where are we suppose to post solutions to the assignments you gave us for your review?
(I believe its better not to go through each solution each one of us made during class (might be waste of our time..)
June 10th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Hello Yaniv, You don’t need to post solutions. If there is a specific solution you want me to take a look at please let me know in class. Though most assignments already have solutions, if there is a specific assignment for which you I still haven’t published a solution and you would like to get one please let me know and I will take care of it. Best, Haim.
June 11th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Dear Students, I gorgot to upload the three flow chart diagrams we created in class (solutions for the last three flow chart diagrams assignments). Next time we meet the first thing I do would be uploading those solutions from the lecturer PC where they were saved. Next meeting (4th meeting) we will complete our overview of XHTML and move forward covering CSS. A good resource for learning XHTML & CSS are the free tutorials you can find at http://www.w3schools.com. Another relevant resource you might find useful is a free HTML book I authored 9 years ago… in Hebrew… available for free at http://www.zindell.com/israeliHTMLBook/israeliHTMLBookWebText1.htm. Just make sure to change the Encoding into Hebrew (Windows) in order to see the texts properly. Towards our next meeting please move forward with developing your personal web page. Try to learn on your own as much as possible. As mentioned in class, we don’t aim in our course to provide a complete 100% coverage of XHTML. The four academic hours devoted for this topic aim at providing you with a basic understanding of XHTML in order to be capable to learn PHP.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hi all, weekend reading
looks like something we all should be aware of.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/null-pointer/soa/Blog-If-PHP-then-goto-is-the-future/
June 12th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Hi Yaniv, Thanks for the link. I have just placed a comment on that blog. I find it highly important to mention that PHP is currently an OOP language allowing to create simple, clean and maintainable code (as in Java). Whether ‘goto’ will get its support… or not… good programmers who know OOP properly won’t even put the effort to learn the PHP new ‘goto’ command. We will cover the OOP approach in meeting #12. Have a great weekend, Haim.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Hey Yaniv
You have Mistake. you can’t buy Israel Domains in Godaddy. i mean (co.il)
And i agree with you that domainthenet.com have pure and standard manager interface but what you really need there to be ?
All you have to do is give your server DNS address and maybe IP address to your server if it required and that’s it.
What you really need to do in your account manager for real ?
Also its untrue that it’s not compatible with Firefox. it is very compatible with Firefox even more then IE.
So i think you are wrong…
Also i Suggest everyone to use add-on for Firefox called “Web developer”
Its great and very useful for web programmers.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Hello, I have just uploaded the three flow chart diagrams for the three questions we did in class: average function, magic number function and decimal to binary function. Enjoy, Haim.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Hello Students, From now on please access our eLearning environment at http://xperato.abelski.com directly. Enjoy, Haim.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Hi all, Regarding web-hosting, I’ve been using http://www.bluehost.com for the last year I hosted multiple websites on the basic hosting. The price is o.k. and the service is good. they also have a c-panel that includes auto install for many open source projects including Joomla and WordPress. The speed in Israel is a bit slow but if your site is not only or mainly intended for Israel it should not be a problem. My hosting plan is ending at the end of the month and I am considering to keep using them for the second year. Good night, Gadi.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Hello Gadi
I had Experience with Bluehost about a year in 2007.
They Are good once but they miss most the common and critical options in hosting.
First of all they accept only max file upload 10MB.
Also Htaccess size of file is only 2 MB
They have no support in GD and GD2 for image files.
Disk Storage and traffic Unlimited is not so unmetered as it says.
You can use the storage and traffic until it doesn’t effect of stability of other websites in this server.
You must to remember that you are not the only one in the server that hosting website in it.
thats why it called Shared Hosting.
It has the maximum GB’s of storage And also Maximum traffic ability that is all about RAM and Herz that the server has.
So if they say that it is unlimited thats not true. If your site will have too many traffic and will slow
down the server load and of course it will effect other users, your account will be suspended and i’ll see it many times.
Just google about it.
Also i really suggest you to own the hosting in cirtexhosting not because that i’m there about 2.5 years but
Because there hosting is FFMPEG hosting that is not much in the world.
I will not explain what FFMPEG hosting means and why i need it and support cuz i need to right post about it if i want to explain
but this is the best hostings with real support with all futures for running Big websites and portals.
DO NOT BE PROUD WHEN YOU SEE UNLIMITED SPACE AND TRAFFIC.
Because this is not true
Also ask your server if they sell dedicated ip for your website and how much is it.
Good Luck body
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 am
Dear Students, I have just fixed few typos in the presentation about ‘strings’ (part of our PHP module) available online via the eLearning environment. The version online is the correct one. Unfortuneately, I have already asked to print out that presentation for you so the best thing would be either fixing those small typos by handwriting or waiting for the fixed pages to be delivered over to you in class so you could replace the old ones with the new ones (in your folder). In any case, we still have some time till we go over that topic. According to our course plan it should happen on July 27th. The typos that were fixed are shown on pages 38,39,40,42,43,49 and 50. Best, Haim.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:09 am
Dear Students, Our PHP module should start on July 29th. I have just completed to prepare 4 video clips that IMHO will assist you to get into PHP in a simpler way. You will find them at http://www.phpbook.co.il. In addition, you will find at that web site ready for download (via the ‘Chapter Download’ page) the first five chapters. Unlike the training material in our course, this online training book is written in Hebrew. I strongly reommend to take a look and try to move forward on your own before our meeting. I believe you can only benefit from that. In any case, I will go over everything and explain everything in class. Good Luck, Haim.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:59 am
Hay Soso,
Thanks for the feedback, I did not know all the tech details.
I have been using ffmpeg software for video conversion from time to time but did not know there is a hosting feature on that name.
I took a look at cirtexhosting.
I need a hosting plan that will allow me the option to host a few sites – my-sites and at-work project sites,
I am not to worried about videos at the moment an most of my current projects are small (maybe that is why I did not have a problem with Bluehost). What would be the hosting you would recommend?
Thanks
Gadi
June 24th, 2009 at 7:44 am
I recommend you to take a look at http://www.eapps.com. I have been working with hosting services companies since 1998.. at first I was burned with few israeli ones… after wards I was burned with one located in the states… serioucely burned… during the last 3 years I am working with eapps… they support both PHP and Java EE. Excellent control interface… you actually have control on nearly everything you have in mind. They work with big companies (e.g. UN). I strongly recommend to check that option and compare it with others. Best, Haim.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Thanks, Haim
will look into that option as well.
Gadi
June 24th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Dear Students, Our last meeting focused on XHTML & CSS. One of the topics we covered was the possibility to define CSS for an XHTML element with a specific ID. One of the thoughts that was raised in class was that we cannot use the same ID with more than one XHTML element. I have just checked that and it certainly seems possible to do so. You can find a sample that shows it in our CSS Fundamentals course (check the ‘Introduction Samples’ files and look for id_simple_css_document.css and id_simple_css_document.xhtml files). Good Luck, Haim.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Dear Students, In our last meeting I mentioned the Eclipse Demo Camp Galileo 2009 that takes place in Zend (Ramat-Gan). It should happen today at 17:20. More details can be found at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_Galileo_2009/Tel_Aviv. Enjoy, Haim.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Hi all
I just found this really interesting and very useful article, it deals with the importance of SQL configuration on and its impact on your app performance.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indexing-the-web-its-not-just-googles-business/
this is from a web blog called a “A list apart” if you have the time digg in to ,there are lots of interesting stuff there
cheers.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:17 am
another useful resource… this is a PDF document written in HEBREW about SQL basics and SQL injection it’s from 2005 but i believe most of it still relevant to our days.
caution!! it’s long
http://www.underwar.co.il/download.asp?ID=264
June 25th, 2009 at 5:31 am
Hi Yaniv, Thanks for the recommended resources:) About another issue, as the slides of our course continuously updated I want to update that the slides about PHP Reflection (topic ‘reflection’ from ‘PHP Fundamentals’ course) have just been updated. More slides were added. The soft copy online version is the updated one. Since your material was already printed we will update this manually once we reach that topic (meeting #15). Best, Haim.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:01 am
As Haim Asked i will not post about SQL Injection and XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
But this is something that you will worry about.
My website get hacked 2 times about year ago till i figure out the hole in the form i got in some page in my website.
This is easy to find the hole when you have small project with couple pages but when you are talking about hundreds of pages you have serious problem when it comes to it.
There is many scanner tools for analyze possibilities of injection in your website
i suggest to google it and use them
Also i suggest for all beginners with html and css to use this tool for make there css support to IE 6
IE 6 Fixer Tool
http://www.onderhond.com/tools/ie6fixer/
Haim as you suggest yesterday i think i will open a blog of mine
June 26th, 2009 at 1:28 am
Hi Soso, I strongly recommend on setting up your own blog. Personal professional blogs are highly important for self marketing. In the past no one had a web site… after sometime everyone got one… today, nearly most professional people don’t have a blog… nor companies that can use them as well… it is just a matter of time till blogs become popular. Those who make the first step and start running one are the ones who most likely will get higher traffic than the others. This is how it works on the web. Technically I recommend on using WordPress. I did some research about the business aspect when running blogs and placed together few slides. More info at http://www.lifemichael.com/en/?p=138. I strongly recommend to take a look. Good Luck, Haim.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Hello Friends, Following comment #24 (above) I want to specify that in accordance with W3 CSS Spec having more than one element with the same ID is not legal… which means that doing so results in having an XHTML document that even though the brower succeeds to display.. it is still not a valid one. I want to take this opportunity and give the credit to Gadi Fridman for pointint out this issue to me. Since I want to keep this post & comments focused on the administrative issues of our course lets use our forums for all professional discussions. I have just placed a detailed post at ‘CSS Fundamentals’ course ‘Introduction’ forum. Please check it for more information. Best, Haim.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Hello Friends, I have just completed my PHP book in Hebrew. It is a short variation of our ‘PHP Fundamentals’ module in our course. You can find all chapters available for download. Please note the chapters match the official topics of ‘PHP Fundamentals’ module (available as a course at http://xperato.abelski.com). During this weekend I will upload many new video clipse on http://www.phpbook.co.il so they could assist you in the course of the rest of our course (13 meetings that focus on PHP). I strongly recommend to start playing around with PHP trying to run simple programs… installing on your end either Xampp or Zend Server… and come ready to class. The productivity of our meetings will be much higher on your end if you go over the material before each meeting. I hope the new hebrew text book will assist you going over the formal course material, which is written in English. Good Luck, Haim.
June 29th, 2009 at 3:37 am
Hi All, Regarding XAMPP and Mac (Apple).
I am probably the only one in our course using a mac but in case any one runs into the same problem, here is my solution.
After trying to work with XAMPP on my Mac, it seems that it might not be the best solution for this platform.
I could not even be sure it was running as I was getting to the original Apple Apache server page.
I started using MAMP from http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html and this seem to give a better solution (seems to be running well so far).
Gadi
June 29th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Gadi – MAMP Give you better yes
But There Is Also WAMP That i’m Using And its worked good so far
June 29th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Hi Soso,
Thanks but from what I saw, WAMP does not have a mac version.
June 29th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Gadi,
check out zendserver they have mac version and the support forums are fairly active and useful
http://www.zend.com/en/products/server/downloads-all
June 30th, 2009 at 1:28 am
Hi all
(another resource sharing) this is a comparison table that includes almost every WAMP (Windows, Apache, Mysql, PHP) packages available online. FYI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_WAMPs
June 30th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Thanks Yaniv,
I will check the Zend option as well.
Gadi
June 30th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Dear Students, Following our 6th meeting and toward our 7th one I have just added on our platform (into ‘PHP Fundamentals’->’PHP Basics’) 10 new assignments (including their solutions). You can already do them (except for the ‘Numbers For Loop Trenary’ assignment, which should wait for our next meeting when we will explain the trenary operator). Please complete all assignments in topics ‘Introduction to PHP’ and ‘PHP Basics’ (except for the ‘Numbers For Loop Trenary’ assignment). In our next meeting (7th meeting) we will copmlete those small topics we skipped in our last meeting (6th meeting), solve together and explain those assignments you had difficulties with and have some time for self study solving the ‘Numbers For Loop Trenary’ assignment. If you get into any difficulties with current fundamental topics please try to get some assistance at http://www.phpbook.co.il where you can find various video clips that explain fundamental topics. Good Luck, Haim.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Hi Yaniv, Thanks for the helpful link. I have just added it into the ‘Introduction to PHP’ forum of the ‘PHP Fundamentals’ course (with your credit). Please let’s try to have all professional discussions within our forums… and keep this place for posts referring to administrative issues… Thanks, Haim.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:48 am
Yaniv,
Thanks for the link to Zend. I finally used the Zend debugger to work with Eclipe but without using the complete package for that I use MAMP – something like we do in class (only with XAMPP)- and that seems to work well for me.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:00 am
Hi All,
Regarding Eclipse and Aptana (http://www.aptana.com/ and http://www.aptana.com/php ).
I was trying to figure out the difference between the two as I was using Aptana for a while and it looked similar to Eclipse. I found out this article:
http://blog.adambard.com/2008/02/04/aptana-development-environment/
It seems that they are both based on the same basic open source but the Aptana studio have also support for CSS, HTML and Java Script and also the ability to see the browser preview inside the working environment. There is also an Aptana Plug-in for Eclipse.
Would love to hear your opinions. Gadi.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:26 am
Dear Students, I have just completed to prepare a collection of short questions that will assist you verifying your understanding (according to the Zend Certified Engineer certification spirit) of the ‘PHP Basics’ topic in our course. You can find this collection at http://www.abelski.com/courses/ZCE/phpbasics.pdf. Some of the questions refer to small topics we will cover in our next meeting. Please note that each slide has the detailed explained answer in its ‘notes’. Enjoy, Haim.
July 6th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Please note the change I have introduced into our course plan by moving part of the OOP topic to our 8th meeting. That will allow us all to span the OOP part of our course over a longer period of time. Make sure that towards the 8th meeting you go over the ‘functions’ and the ‘OOP’ topics (excluding the advanced OOP sub topics that will be covered in our 12th meeting). Good Luck! Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Hi, I have just created a new group on facebook.. its name is “PHP Course (Ness College Tel-Aviv #1)”. Just search for this group on facebook and join it. I hope it will assist us all to keep in touch… during the course… and afterwards:) Best, Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Following your request I have just uploaded a solution for the multiplication table assignment. Enjoy:) Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:37 am
Dear Friends, During our last meeting few questions for unique scenarios involved with using the switch case statement were mentioned in class. I am now working on a detailed post in our ‘PHP Fundamentals’->’PHP Basics’ forum trying to cover all different cases.. including working samples you can overview. Should you have any further questions please don’t hesitate and place a comment to my detailed post in that forum.. and we will continue this discussion over there. Greetings, Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Dear Friends, I believe it would be highly practical on your end to take a look at the user guide for xperato.abelski.com web site… it will assist you when using this web site. Please find it at http://www.abelski.com/courses/guides/userguide.pdf. Good Luck, Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Dear Friends, During our last meeting a question was raised regarding how we can check whether a specific variable was already declared… or not. The solution for that would be using the isset() construct we covered in class. I have just post a detailed explanation together with a code sample at ‘PHP Basics’ forum within the ‘PHP’ course on our web site (xperato.abelski.com). Enjoy, Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Dear Friends, During our last meeting we mentioned the versions management system the eclipse includes… I have just created a short video clip (in Hebrew) that explains it… and placed it online at http://www.phpbook.co.il. Should you have any questions about this possibility please post a comment at that post. You can find the clip at http://www.phpbook.co.il/wordpress/?p=128. Enjoy, Haim.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Hello Friends, As I told in class… the key for success is coding… coding… and coding… therefore, should you feel you need more assignments please let me know. In the meantime, I hope you use your available time and work in effective way covering all topics we have covered so far. Good Luck, Haim.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Hello Friends, Following the questions I get from time to time… I feel the best would be adding few more assignments so you could practice more. Please remember. The key for success is PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE…. and PRACTICE. The more you practice the BEST! From now on I will also keep in mind to add remarks into the solutions I prepare for you. If you encounter in a question without solution… a questions for which you would like to have one… please let me know and I will add one. If you encounter a solution you don’t understand… please try to run it using the debugger… still having questions… please just email me and I will add more explanations into the solution. There aren’t any shortcuts. PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE… and PRACTICE. About another issue, please bear in mind that assignments with difficulty level of ’1′ and ’2′ are the ones you should inssist on completing. They target the fundamental understanding of the language basics we learn. The more difficult ones (difficulty level ’3′ and beyond) can wait. Rome wasn’t built in one day. At the same time, if any of you happen to feel more challenges are required please let me know. I will prepare more candies (assignments) with an higher difficulty level. In any case, the formal course targets assignments level ’1′ and ’2′ only. Our course is a fundamental one… for people without background. Those who do have background… or happen to have the required time to move forward… please move forward with the more difficuly assignments… and please keep me updated so I could prepare more candies. This way I believe everyone will get the highest possible value of our course. Best, Haim.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Hello Students, I have just upladed the solutions for ‘variables swap’ and ‘variables tricky swap’ assignments. Good Luck! Haim.
July 11th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Hello Students, I have just completed to place on our eLearning web site 5 more assignments that focus on gaining confidence with using the ‘for’ loop. Please keep me updated about those topics you run into difficulties with using them and I will add more assignments accordingly. Best, Haim.
July 11th, 2009 at 4:18 am
Hello Students, I have just uploaded ‘The Chess Table’, a new assignment to gain more confidence with using ‘for’ loop, nested loops and the ‘trenary’ operator. The new assignment also strength your expeience with integrating HTML code and PHP code. Enjoy, Haim.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Hello Students, I have just completed to add many more new video clips. You can reach them all at http://www.phpbook.co.il/wordpress/?page_id=7. I strongly recommend towards our coming meeting to watch the relevant clips (the one about declaring functions and the one about object oriented programming. I have no doubt it would assist you. Shavua Tov, Haim.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Hello Students, I have just completed to post answers for all questions that were left open from our last meeting. You can find them within the forums of ‘Object Oriented Programming’ and ‘Functions’ topics in our online course. Should you need any clarifications please post your comments within those two forums. In addition, I have just added 5 new assignments (difficulty level 1) to the topic ‘Object Oriented Programming’. Towards next meeting please complete all assignment in topic ‘functions’ and in topic ‘object oriented programming’ please complete the following assignments only: ‘Simple Cat Class’,'Simple Dog Class’,'Simple Student Class’,'Simple Person Class’, ‘Simple Rectangle Class’ and ‘Simple Circle’. Good Luck, Haim.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Hello Students, You can track all comments on my blog (most of them related to this post… which make them relevant for you…) at http://www.lifemichael.com/en/?feed=comments-rss2. I believe you can effectively use this RSS in order to track our course. Good Luck, Haim.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Hi All, I found many useful videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/phpacademy
If you did not run into it until now maybe you will find useful as well.
Enjoy, Gadi.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Hi All, Relevant clips of phpacademy youtube are already embedded in our online course. Should you find a clip you feel I should add into our course please let me know. Best, Haim.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hi Friends, Following our last meeting through which we covered the basic parts of Object Oriented Programming topic in our course please check http://www.umlbook.com for more info about UML and especially UML Class Diagrams. Though this topic isn’t part of our course I believe you will find this resource useful. Best, Haim.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Hello Friends, Following our last meeting I have just uploaed three new videos that explain various topics about Arrays. You can find them at http://www.phpbook.co.il. In addition, for those of you who finish the assignments in this topic I recommend going over the tricky questions at http://www.abelski.com/courses/ZCE/arrays.pdf. They will strength your understanding of the ‘Array’ topic in PHP. Good Luck, Haim.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:55 am
Hello Friends, In 2001 I wrote a short tutorial (in Hebrew) that teaches JavaScript… you can find it (still online) at http://www.zindell.com/israeliJSBook/israeliJSBookWebText1.htm. You will need to change the encoding in order to see it properly. I believe you might find it useful. Best, Haim.
July 21st, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Hi all
this tutorial suggest directory structure when developing web application for cases you don’t use framework (which usually comes with their own structure) i find it very helpful in terms of getting basic understanding of the “big picture”
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/organize-your-next-php-project-the-right-way/
July 21st, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Hi All, Towards our coming meeting that should cover Strings, Regular Expressions and Web Forms I have completed to prepare several video clips that explain various topics. You can find them all at http://www.phpbook.co.il. Best, Haim.
July 26th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Hi All, Especially for our coming meeting that is about to cover Strings, Regular Expressions and Web Forms I have just prepared three collecitons of tricky questions related for these topics. You can find them at http://www.abelski.com/courses/ZCE/strings.pdf and at http://www.abelski.com/courses/ZCE/webfeatures.pdf. Enjoy, Haim.
July 26th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Building Own CMS !
http://css-tricks.com/php-for-beginners-building-your-first-simple-cms/
July 27th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Hi All, Please check the google group I have just started for us to interact in between the meetings at http://groups.google.com/group/ness-php-basic-tel-aviv-may-2009 Best, Haim.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Hi Friends, During our last meeting there were three questions for which I promissed to provide more details… Please check the posts I have just placed in the following topics forums (online at http://www.abelski.com): ‘Strings’, ‘Regular Expressions’ and ‘Web Forms’. Regarding all ideas including the idea of having a small break in our course I have forwarded them all to the relevant person. Best, Haim.
August 1st, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hi Friends, As we are moving forward in our course… and soon you will start to develop more and more GUI web based applications I belive you will find the following presentations useful in your work during this course and in general: http://www.abelski.com/courses/GUIDesign/introduction.pdf http://www.abelski.com/courses/GUIDesign/principles.pdf http://www.abelski.com/courses/GUIDesign/practices.pdf
These slides are taken from the ‘GUI Design Fundamentals’ course I am now working on at http://www.abelski.com. Enjoy, Haim.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Dear Students, Should you encounter any topic covered in our slides that isn’t clear to you please let me know and I will adjust those un clear slides and add notes that explain the un clear topic. Should you encounter any topic covered by my book (www.phpbook.co.il) that isn’t clear to you please let me know and I will edit that specific topic and add explanations. Should you encounter with any topic you cannot understand and a video clip might help please let me know and I will prepare one. It doesn’t matter whether you did come to class and didn’t understand.. or missed the lesson and now you are trying to catch up. Please let me know and I will prepare everything you need in order to assist you. Should you encounter any topic for which you have already completed the assignments and new ones can assist please let me know and I will prepare them for you. Should you encounter any assignment without a solution for which you would like to get one please let me know and I will prepare it for you. Good Luck! Haim.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Dear Students, Please don’t forget and let me know of those assignments that still don’t have a solution and I will add one. Please don’t forget and let me know of any topic that you feel that your understanding is not complete and I will prepare a relevant video clip at http://www.phpbook.co.il. Should you encounter a topic at http://www.phpbook.co.il that its chapter isn’t clear… let me know and I will add more explanations into that chapter. Best, Haim.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Hey. i also suggest for everyone to use this website that makes great tutorials
http://net.tutsplus.com/
Hello Haim, i have a quastion about strtr…
Can i cut the words in text, in example in comments that users made by using strtr in php code ?
have you some sources that explains how to do that ?…
Thank you
August 6th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Hi Soso, I have placed your question in our “Strings” forum… and added my answer.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Hello Friends,
(1) I have just completed to add new video clips at http://www.phpbook.co.il. Many of them explaining the OOP topic in our coming meeting. Please do your best and watch these OOP clips before we meet. It will assist you. Also, please note the clips that explain the last meeting topic (sessions management). I prepared two clips. Hope it helps.
(2) I have placed all answers for questions that were left open from our last meeting in the relevant forum on our eLearning environment at xperato.abelski.com. Please check the following forums: ‘Introduction to PHP’, ‘Sessions Management’, ‘HTTP Headers’ and ‘Web Forms’. Should you have any further questions please place a comment to the relevant post in those forums.
(3) I have just finished to prepare kind of a small project that we will develop in phases during the remaining of our course. Please check the eLearning environment at ‘PHP Workshops’ course.
(4) Please make sure to check the ‘HTTP Headers’ forum where I placed an important message about bug in PHP engine when running on XP. It should be relevant for your work at home.
Have a great weekent!
Haim.
August 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Hi, Our coming meeting this Monday will focus on OOP. This topic is hardly covered in PHP books…. and when it is… its coverage is usually not very successfuly. The OOP aspect of PHP is relatively new. Most training centers don’t cover it properly as most PHP developers don’t have practical experience writing OOP code (if you check the available open source projects in PHP you will find that most of them hardly use the OOP capabilities PHP has). In our course things will be different and we will do our best to allow each student to reach the highest possible level of OOP understanding. Please go over the OOP topics we covered in our last OOP meeting, watch all OOP relevant video clips at http://www.phpbook.co.il and go over the relevant chapter at http://www.phpbook.co.il as well as the relevant official slides in our course. Best, Haim.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Hi All,
I ran into this site with learning material for PHP, did not have much time looking into it but you might find it useful.
http://php.eitan.ac.il/main.php?id=00100
Enjoy,
Gadi
August 10th, 2009 at 6:07 am
I have just checked the OOP topic on that site… as I suspected… far from being updated. There are many OOP related changed that were introduced in PHP 5.0. So far, all resources I found about OOP in PHP were very weak… even the book I recommended you in the ‘Introduction’ forum is not sufficient. PHP 5.0 has become a ‘real’ OOP language by all means… very similar to Java.. so far I still haven’t found any resource that covers PHP OOP capabilities in a proper way… especially those capabilities which are less technical in their nature. Best, Haim.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Hi Students, I have just completed all solutions for all assignments in ‘OOP’ topic from the ‘PHP Fundamentals’ module in our course. I also added two more assignments as well as their solutions so you could practice a bit more the ‘overriding’ and the ‘polymorphism’ topics. You can find them all online. In addition, I updated the slides of this topic to include few sample code both for the ‘final’ key word and for the ‘interface’ topic. Enjoy, Haim.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Regarding a good OOP book, have a look at this one, let us know if it will do the trick.
PHP Object-Oriented Solutions by David Powers. Gadi
August 13th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Hi Gadi, Thanks for the reference. I have just browsed the ‘table of content’ of that book. I am afraid that it doesn’t cover the more important topics in OOP as abstract classes, interfaces etc. I have the feeling the author of that book hasn’t come from the Java \ C# OOP world. The book doesn’t mention interfaces, abstract classes or polymorphism… In addition, most of that book isn’t about OOP… it is about various practical topics in PHP that exploit the OOP advantages (as working with XML). I guess David Powers is a PHP developer in its origins… so he still doesn’t understand the real power of OOP as we can see in Java EE and in .NET web applications. I recommend on using the slides I prepared for you… as well as the OOP chapter in my book… as well as watching the video clips in Hebrew that explain the various OOP topics. If required please let me know and I will prepare more video clips.. if required please let me know and I will add annotations into the video clips to explain any question that arises. Good Luck, Haim.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Hello Students, The best approach for overcoming the OOP is practice.. practice.. and practice. In addition, it is also very helpful to get more explanations about OOP from other resources such as books.. video clips.. and web sites. Listening to as many explanations (each one of the uses different words… different language..) eventually does the trick. OOP is not an easy to learn topic and it takes lots of practice and time till you understand it. Please let me know of any additional video clip I can prepare for you so you could hear my explanations one more time… as many times as needed. I would love to assist and do my best helping you understanding all topics in a proper way. Best, Haim.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Hello Friends,
Please don’t hesitate and let me know of any topic for which we still don’t have a video clip.. and you would like to have one… so you could use it in your self learning at home.
Please don’t hesitate and let me know of any topic in which you would like to get more assignments (together with solutions) so you could go in depth and get a better understanding.
Please don’t hesitate and let me know of any slide you don’t understand and for which you would like to get additional explanation.. or more detailed slides.. I will be very glad to introduce the required changes in order to assist you in your learning.
Best,
Haim.
August 16th, 2009 at 4:36 am
Hello Friends, You can find a huge number of PHP examples available for free at http://www.java2s.com/Code/Php/CatalogPhp.htm. It can help.
Enjoy,
Haim.
August 17th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
A complete video tutorial on how to create a WordPress Theme from scratch.
http://css-tricks.com/designing-for-wordpress-complete-series-downloads/
Enjoy, Gadi
August 31st, 2009 at 7:07 am
Dear Students, Today we won’t learn the JDBC planned topic. Please check our google group for mode details. Best, Haim.
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:55 am
I have just updated the OOP chapter at http://www.phpbook.co.il as well as the slides about OOP in our ‘PHP Fundamentals’ course to cover the ‘Type Hinting’ topic. Please note that this specific topic is a relatively new one in PHP and it isn’t one of those topics their understanding is crusial for the rest of our course. Greetins, Haim.
September 10th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Dear Students, Following our last meetings and the answers I promissed I have just sent a detailed email via our google group. To have things simple I also chose to copy & paste the content of that email into this specific comment.
(1)
I have just added a video clip describing how to connect a DB using MySQLi extension. You can find it at http://www.phpbook.co.il.
(2)
I have just updated the DB Connectivity slides of the ‘PHP Fundamentals’ course. I added a code sample for accessing a DB using PDO.
(3)
I have just added a video clip describing how to connect a DB using PDO. This clip (unlike the previous one) was prepared in English and it is available from within the http://www.abelski.com web site inside the ‘PHP Fundamentals’ course on the right.
(4)
Towards next meeting I have just prepared a short video clips that explains how to write into a file and how to read it. This clip was shot in hebrew and you can find it at http://www.phpbook.co.il.
(5)
I have just update the planned ‘project’ for our course. I listed recommended three phases for completing it. Check ‘PHP Workshops’ course for more info about this planned project and the recommended phases. I suggest giving it a try and try to do it. Next meeting, in any case, we will go over it so you could get answers for all questions. Basically, it is a simple project. There isn’t much code to write. Please note the ‘bonus’ part. Good Luck!
(6)
You can find a list of the basic commands in PHP at http://www.php.net. And… if to be more specific, please check the following URL address:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/langref.php
(7)
I have just added the solutions for the two assignments in ‘Database Connectivity’. You can find them on line at http://www.abelski.com.
(8)
Regarding the capability to call a ‘stored procedure’ using MySQLi extension… this capability exists. You can find a description for how to achieve it at the following URL address:
http://blog.rvdavid.net/using-stored-procedures-mysqli-in-php-5/
(9)
I have recently noticed that not everyone was aware during the course for my responses via my blog (the dedicated post for our course). If you happen to have a an open question please either check my blog or let me know (by email) and I will get back to you. Promise.
(10)
Regarding the question about the prepared statement and what happens if the data includes invalid characters… please note that the default behavior won’t raise any exception.. you can try the following code:
< ?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("127.0.0.1","iuser","ipassword","inventory");
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare(“INSERT INTO products VALUES(?,?)”);
$stmt->bind_param(‘ss’,$id,$name);
$id=123123;
$name=’momo< ';
$stmt->execute();
$mysqli->close();
?>
Nevertheless, please note the functions you can call in accordance with the documentation.. functions through which you will be able to get detailed info about the errors that happened.
(11)
Regarding the question whether we can set users groups in MySQL… just as it common with Linux\Unix… I was surprised to find out… after searching and searching… I was surprised to find that MySQL doesn’t allow setting groups as in Linux\Unix.
(12)
Please note (following the question about username and password case sensitivity) that both the username and the password in use to access MySQL database are case sensitive.
(13)
Setting up a MySQL privelage that allows accessing from several specific IP numbers can be easily done by writing those IP numbers separated with commas (e.g. 127.0.0.1,23.12.53.123,220.102.243.2).
(14)
During the last meeting a question was raised about whether it is possible to set a privelage (username+password) for a specific table.. or a specific stored procedure… the answer is ‘yes’. The phpMyAdmin as you probably noticed simple execute on our behalf SQL commands via the MySQL command line. Check the following URL for more info:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/grant.html
If mistakenly I forgot to refer a specific question you asked and I promissed to return back with an answer please let me know.
Have a great weekend!
Haim.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:50 am
Dear Students,
I have just introduced a small change in our plans for today. We will cover Files Access, Networking and the PHP standard library. In addition, please note the new updated slides for the ‘Files Accessing’ and ‘Networking’ topics. Apart of that, I have just prepared few clips (in English) available at ‘PHP Fundamentals’ course at xperato.abelski.com and few clips (in Hebrew) available at http://www.PHPBook.co.il. Those clips cover topics that belong to ‘Files Accessing’ and ‘Networking’.
Best,
Haim.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Best ! Thank you…
Every one who needs WordPress Cheat-Sheet can get it here…
Very helpful
http://ekinertac.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Wordpress-Cheat-Sheet.pdf
September 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Dear Friends,
We have three meetings left in our course:
18. PHP Security
19. PHP & Web Services
20. Zend Framework
The last meeting (#20) will focus on the Zend Framework. In order to have a smooth effective meeting it is necessary that you verify on your end your understanding of the required OOP topics for understanding the Zend Framework. These topics include, mainly, the following:
+ static method
+ inheritance
+ abstract class
+ interfaces
As well as all other basic fundamental topics in OOP (calling a method.. refering a property… etc).
Please overview these specific topics… you can overview them by watching the relevant video clips at http://www.phpbook.co.il... and by reading the hebrew explanations available at http://www.phpbook.co.il as well as by using the official slides of our course. In our 19th meeting I will allocate time for answering all questions that arise about these specific topics. Please get ready for the 19th meeting. I don’t want to waste time on overviewing these fundamental topics during the 20th meeting… a meeting that should be devoted to the Zend Framework.
In addition, please note that you can already find online the introduction slides of the ‘Zend Framework’ course. Please note the example you can run on your Zend Community Server installation (it already comes with the Zend Framework). Please go over these slides and let me know of any questions that arise (mentioning the specific slide #number) so I could add notes explaining and answering your questoins on the relevant slides.
The ‘Zend Framework’ is a big topic and the purpose of our last meeting is to pave the required fundamental knowledge & understanding in order to allow you to use that framework in the future.
Shana Tova,
Haim.
December 1st, 2009 at 12:04 am
[...] course started and Yaniv followed my advice to keep on with his self study concurrently with the course [...]