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PHP Variable names, Member names, Class names

27.04.05

English (EU) PHP Variable names, Member names, Class names

Permalink 19:37:16, by Francois Planque Email , Categories: PHP

I have just extended my PHP coding standard guidelines with these rules about variable naming:

  • Remember this is PHP, not Microsoft Visual C++. There is actually little value in naming variables something like strFullTitle . Something like full_title is definitely enough and much easier to read!
  • As an exception to the previous rule, we'll preferably prefix private or protected member variables of a class with an underscore as in _full_title. This serves as an easy reminder that the variable is not designed to be called in any other ways as in $this->_full_title .
  • Class names should start with a capital, as in Book .
  • Variable names should be all lowercase, as in $title = 'A brand new day'; except when they are object references as in:

    $a_Book = & new Book( 'A brand new day' );
  • When naming object references, always end their name with the name of the class as in $a_Book or $another_Book instead of Book_to_read for example. This allows to easily search & find all calls to a given method of a given class. You could for exampel easily search on this string: "Book->get_title(" .

1 comment

Comment from: Free Shopping [Visitor]
A very useful resource for PHP coding guidelines here
http://www.evolt.org/article/PHP_coding_guidelines/18/60247/

cheers
2005-11-17 @ 12:15

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