Some Common Mistakes for PHP Developers to Avoid

PHP developer is meant to be a professional problem solver of every PHP-related project. In every project, they are dealing with different features and code. While performing their day-to-day tasks they are facing many coding challenges, sometime some code execute and some time with a minor mistake that code does not execute. Whenever any experienced PHP developer think of switching towards new company they need to prepare PHP interview questions according to their experiences and code challenges they face at the time of coding. There are lots of challenges they must have faced during coding but a professional Web developer strives to search elegant solutions to solve their coding problems. But fixing a simple problem can some time become very time consuming, In this blog, we will discuss some minor mistakes that php develop does during coding which need to be avoid. We will present set of some errors with its solution to help the developer to quick fix errors or to prevent them.

List of the common errors used to improve readability; usability and maintainability of PHP code are mentioned below:

Problem1: Not implementing Functions and built-in functions
PHP programmers during their start-up avoid using functions which then later become major problems in projects. They are writing dozen of code lines of PHP without wrapping in functions. It results in difficulty in code understanding and maintainability.

Solution of the above problem: Divide your project code into functions and use in-built functions on your web-project. There are thousands of built-in functions available on the internet to solve common issues, instead of writing your own code, research internet and according to your code functionality and requirement implement in-built PHP functions. These inbuilt functions are easily available on some PHP tutorials, documentation which are meant to learn php online, there you can get the code of the functions. These will decrease your efforts and improve errors as well.

Problem2: Magic numbers are not properly defined:

We can say a number or unexplained lieral values in a code as a magic number.this will effect on readability of the code.
For example, 9 used in the following code is a magic number as it doesn't contain any explanation. It is not clear why the code should run 9 times.

<?php
for($m = 0; $m < 9; $m++)
{
  //perform checking
}

Solution:
To improve this, Give a descriptive name to 9

$studententry = 9;
for($m = 0; $m < $ studententry; $m++)
{
  //perform checking
}

Problem3: Improper input validation
Validating input is the effective method used for security purposes. The improper validation can give rise to hacking and vulnerability. One of the most common effects of improper validation is SQL injection.

Solution:
a) To protect from SQL injection, the proper validation by following entire rules must be done.
b) mysql\_real\_escape\_string() can be used to prevent characters responsible for changing nature of SQL commands.
c) Make use of filter_var() function to  validate variables. In which, FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN flag, FILTER_VALIDATE_INT flag, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL flag are used along with filter var() function to perform Boolean, integers and email validations respectively.
d) Make use of prepared statements as well as query parameters.

Problem4: Not using User friendly URL

Solution: Avoid using the following type of URL
mywebname.com/product.php?pid=45&sub_id=76

Use SEO friendly URL like the below mentioned link:
https://www.codingtag.com/how-to-add-push-notification-in-wordpress

Problem 5: Improper Assigning in Conditions:
Not properly assigning in condition is the most common mistake that even an experienced developer also does which will create an error while execution.

Example
Writing if ($serialno = '1') {instead of if ($serialno == '1') {.

Solution:
Write carefully code or make a Decent type of IDE such as Eclipse, NetBeans, PHPStorm, and Dreamweaver which will detect errors and warn you while coding.

Conclusion:
These were the common mistakes that many developer encounters during php coding. This blog will definitely help them to reduce errors and become a part of their learning process. There are many other errors, documentation and online courses are also available where you can easily learn PHP online along with core concepts.