Top 5 practice to become a good PHP Developer

1. Use PHP Core Functions and Classes

 Always give preference to the functions already defined and use php's core classes to acheive your goal before defining your own function or classes. For example There’s no need to create a function to remove the white space at the beginning and at the end of a string when you can just use the trim() function

2. Using Configuration File

Always create a configuration file for variables which are used globally in your application. For example  Instead of having your database connection settings scattered everywhere, why not just create one master file that contains its settings, and then include it in your PHP scripts? In case of changes, you will need to change only one file instead of changing multiple files.

3. Always Sanitize Data

Sanitize user input before you start any processing on the data to avoid sql injection or cross-site scripting xss attack. Luckily, there’s a PHP functions that can help. htmlspecialchars
mysql_real_escape_string  are few functions to santize your data. you can write your own function to avoid cross-site scriptingattack

4. Comment Your Code

Don't forget to comment your  code. A well comment code not only helps other to understand the code fast but also helps you to generate a good technical documentation on fly. there are tools which does that.
phpDocumentor  is a good tool which helps to generate technical documentation out of your code, if commented properly.

10. Connect with Other PHP Developers

You don’t know all. E ven if you think so, there are thousands of other professionals out there who  know how to do something better than you do. Join a PHP community like PHPDeveloper and interact with others to sharpen your skills.

Wish you to become a better PHP developer. You can also help me referring good things. Your inputs and suggestions are welcome.

MySQL tools

The most popular and best open source database is MySQL. Simple as that. It is consistently fast , reliabile and very, very easy to use. One of MySQLs main features is its cross-platform support, it will run on almost all operating systems, including Windows, OSX, Linux and many more. So, MySQL is the best database, and we all use it. The question now is which is the best MySQL Admin and Development Tool?

MySQL Workbench
This application is a fully featured visual database design package that includes database design, modeling, creation and maintenance bundled into a single environment for the MySQL database system.

Heidi SQL
Heidi SQL is lightweight and fast with a flexible interface, it allows you to browse and edit your databases databases, manage tables, view and edit records, manage user-privileges, import data from text files, run SQL queries, synchronize tables between two databases and export selected tables to other databases or SQL scripts, and all this from an intuitive Windows interface.

Aqua Data Studio
This complete IDE, has four major areas of functionality: Database query and administration tools; a suite of compare tools for databases, source control and file systems; integrated source control client for Subversion (SVN) and CVS; and a powerful database modeler.

phpMyAdmin
This very popular, feature rich and easy to use free tool, written in PHP (obviusly), has been built to handle the full administration of MySQL. It can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage users and permissions, and manage keys on fields.

SQLyog
SQLyog is another popular SQL management tool that has a couple of useful features such as visual schema designer, visual query builder, intelligent code completion and a data / structure synchronization. It support HTTP / HTTPs / SSH tunneling and SSL connections. You can also specify a job manager, define a scheduled database backup and use a notification service to be reminded when some jobs are finished.

MYSQL Front
This graphical GUI for the MySQL database, is a “real” application, it can offer a more refined user-interface than is possible with systems built on PHP and HTML. Response is immediate, as there is no delay of reloading HTML-pages.

SQL Buddy
This cool lightweight ajax powered database management tool is amazing. It is very, very easy to install, unzip the folder to your server and thats it. As for upgrading, delete the older version and replace with the new version, simple.

Navicat Lite MySQL Admin Tool
Navicat is a fast, reliable and popular (millions of downloads) Database Administration tool purpose-built for simplifying database management and reducing administrative costs.

Toad MySQL
Toad for MySQL is a database development and administration tool that provides productivity features for rapidly creating and executing queries and managing complex database systems. It provides utilities to compare, extract and search for objects, manage projects, import/export data and administer the database.

MyCon – MySQL GUI
MyCon is an extremely powerful windows based graphical user interface, MySQL GUI, for administering and working with MySQL server databases. This easy to use MySQL GUI front-end client includes all the functionality and tools you will need to be productive in MySQL as a DBA, developer, manager, report writer or a general end-user.

MySQL Sidu
MySQL Sidu is a FREE MySQL client that works via your web browser, it is simple, intuitive and an easy database tool to use. Sidu is not as powerful as other similiar tools but packs enough punch to merit its place in this list, its features may be limited but it does do exactly what the name says (Sidu stands for Select Insert Delete Update).

Dummy Data Generator tool

GenerateData is a free, open source script written in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL that lets you quickly generate large volumes of custom data in a variety of formats for use in testing software, populating databases.

Datagenerator

Datagenerator is a library and GUI for generating rule based test data for various databases like Mysql, Firebird, Interbase, MSSQL, Oracle, SQLite and PostgreSQL.

dgMaster

Data generator tool which supports many data types (primitive data types,but also names,addresses,post codes,etc.) and generates data in various formats (text,xml,db).It provides a GUI and is extensible by means of plugging-in new data-generator classes.

Spawner Data Generator

Spawner is a generator of sample/test data for databases. It can be configured to output delimited text or SQL insert statements. It can also insert directly into a MySQL 5.x database. Includes many field types, most of which are configurable.

DBMonster

DBMonster is a tool that generates random test data and inserts it into SQL database.

Google gadget Ads

Google has come up with new marketing tool google gadget ads.one of the coolest feature among all is that To be sure that your gadget ad has the latest data, you can force a refresh at an interval you specify.

Google also provide Google ad editor to quickly build, test, and validate your gadget ads prior to submitting it for review.

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