Web Development

This document outlines technical and style guidelines which are followed in website-darenet. Contributors should also follow these guidelines.

Spaces, Linebreaks and Identation

• Use one tab for each level of indentation.
• Use Unix linebreaks ("\n"), not MSDOS ("\r\n") or OS9 ("\r").
• Use K&R style braces and spacing.
• Put a space after control keywords like if and for.
• Put a space after commas in argument lists.
• Put a space around operators like =, <, etc.
• Don't put spaces after function names.
• Parentheses should hug their contents.
• Generally, prefer to wrap code at 80 columns.

Case and Capitalization

• Name variables and functions using lowercase_with_underscores.
• Name classes using UpperCamelCase.
• Name methods and properties using lowerCamelCase.
• Use uppercase for common acronyms like ID and HTML.
• Name constants using UPPERCASE.
• Write true, false and null in lowercase.

Comments

• Do not use "#" (shell-style) comments.
• Prefer "//" comments inside function and method bodies.

PHP Language Style

• Use "<?php", not the "<?" short form. Omit the closing "?>" tag.
• Prefer casts like (string) to casting functions like strval().
• Prefer type checks like $v === null to type functions like is_null().
• Avoid all crazy alternate forms of language constructs like "endwhile" and "<>" (acceptable in templates).
• Always put braces around conditional and loop blocks.

PHP Language Features

• Use PHP as a programming language, not a templating language.
• Avoid globals.
• Avoid extract().
• Avoid eval().
• Avoid variable variables.
• Prefer classes over functions.
• Prefer class constants over defines.
• Avoid naked class properties; instead, define accessors.
• Use exceptions for error conditions.