5 Essential Coding Tips for PHP Developers to Improve Code Maintainability

Learn how to write better code with these five essential tips for PHP developers

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Are you a PHP developer striving for success in your projects?

Writing maintainable code is essential for the success of your project, yet it’s easy to fall into bad habits that can turn your code into a debugging nightmare.

Here’s how you can optimize your coding process and make your life easier.

1. Replace hardcoded values with Constants

When working with values that are used repeatedly throughout your code, it’s best to use constants instead of hardcoding them.

When we hardcode a value, we directly insert the value into the area of code that needs it. This is fine when you hardcode a value once, but as your application grows, more hardcoding means more work.

Rather than hardcoding the same value throughout an application, we can save a reference to the hardcoded value once using a constant.

A constant is the same as a variable, except the value of a constant is immutable, and cannot change. Whereas if you were to change the value of a variable, you can.

You can either define a constant at the top of the relevant class or have a file that stores all of your constants.

Here’s an example of how you can define and use constants in PHP:

private const EVENT_NAME = 'Birthday';

public function getEventName(): string
{
    Return self::EVENT_NAME;
}

How to define a constant in PHP:

• Use the keyword const before defining the constant name.
• Define the constant name in capitals.

Benefits of using Constants over hardcoded values:

1. Easier to maintain your application

Changing the value of a constant is easy, you just change the one place where the constant is defined.