This is where I started, with BASIC back in the 80s. Fast forward lots of years and I'm fumbling my way through phpBB as I try to build upon it to extend my forum to a full website. With some help from a few friends and the php docs it's starting to look ok. After 11 years or so using phpBB I'm still using the php docs to help me on other project sites. Also because all I had was BASIC (and without blowing my own trumpet, quite good with it in school) procedural php was the logical path for me to follow - I still can't get my head around OOP
Hot, as in, above 35 degrees C. It was the middle of summer and in the centre of a heatwave after all. Stuck in a house with dodgy cable TV.
That's too self-restrictive already - it's as easy as https://php.net/fopen where
fopen
can be replaced with any function name or instructions (i.e. https://php.net/else) - you really only type php.net/
into your internet browser's address, followed by what you want to look up. And almost every page comes with examples and mostly useful comments by users. Try it that way.But don't you hate that you can't CTRL+F in a book? That you only have an index with the chapters? That even when you have a keyword lookup at the end it by far cannot come up with every keyword? That's one giant advantage for me. And not being able to stick notes to a non-book can be easily substituted by writing comments in your program code.
Such a book will never exist, as this is phpBB specific. This has little to do with how PHP works, but instead how phpBB's concepts and a few other techniques must be understood - for that there exists the phpBB Extensions manual. And you might be interested in the phpBB Skeleton Extension as a start.
Indeed, no ctrl+F in a book, but I like to use both things. It is not an OR issue; I like the book to compliment on what can be found online. But, as you say, a book can become obsolete very quickly. That was the reason why I was asking for a recommendation.
XAMPP is the easiest way. One of the P's in that acronym stands for PHP (and the others mean you also get a full HTTP server, a database management system, and the Perl language, too). You don't even need to call your PHP files thru the internet browser - since PHP is only an interpreter you can call it from the command line to directly parse a file and output what's meant as output. It's as easy as creating this file:
Code: Select all
<?php
echo 'hello world!';
echo 3.1415+ 700;
php.exe -f helloworld.php
. Using XAMPP has the benefit that at a later time you can also run a full phpBB installation at your local PC and testing your extension.php.exe
for starting to fool around.Just in case: XAMPP is one of the easiest ways.