5 tips in PHP 🐘

In this article, I’ll show you 10 tips that can improve your PHP code 🔍 🐘
In order to make this article easier to read, I’ll write some pieces of code that I’ve encountered and introduce a commented solution if needed, as you know there are 4242424242424 ways to do the same thing ✨ and It’s OK to disagree with my solution 😅

👀 For my examples I use PHP 7.4
🏁 🔥

1 - In this use case, just return the expression 👌

if($foo === 42) {
    return true;
}
return false;

// can be
return $foo === 42;

2 - Null coalescing operator for the win 😍

if($foo !== null) {
    return $foo;
}
return $bar;

// can be
return $foo ?? $bar;

💡 It’s very handy to avoid exceptions when you want to access a key that doesn’t exist

3 - Straight to the point 🥅

$this->user = ['firstname' => 'smaine', 'mail' => '[e-mail]'];

return $this->user;

// can be
return $this->user = ['firstname' => 'smaine', 'mail' => '[e-mail]'];

4 - Initialize your helper once 😛

class FooTransformer
{
    private $propertyAccessor;

    public function transform(array $data): Foo
    {
        $accessor = $this->getAccessor();
        // stuff
    }

    private function getAccessor(): PropertyAccess
    {
        return $this->propertyAccessor ??= PropertyAccess::createPropertyAccessor(); // @lito 
    }
}

5 - Unpack an array 🎩

$users = [
    ['smaone', 'php'],
    ['baptounet', 'javascript'],
];

foreach($users as [$username, $language]) {
    // $username contains the 1st key "smaone" for the 1st iteration
    // $language contains the 2nd key "php" for the 1st iteration
}

In the same way, we can also assign variables from an array, it is useful if a function returns an array 🚀

function getFullname(int $id): array
{
    $statement = $pdo->prepare("SELECT id, lastname, firstname FROM user WHERE id = ?");
    $statement->execute([$id]);
    $result = $statement->fetch();

    // suppose $result contains [42, 'luke', 'lucky'];
    return $result;
}

// main.php 
[$id, $lastname, $firstname] = getFullname(42);
// $id contains 42
// $lastname contains luke
// $firstname contains lucky

---

I hope you enjoyed the read!

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Comments

[Lito]

    private function getAccessor(): PropertyAccess
    {
        return $this->propertyAccessor ?? $this->propertyAccessor = PropertyAccess::createPropertyAccessor(); 
    }

Is same as:

    private function getAccessor(): PropertyAccess
    {
        return $this->propertyAccessor ??= PropertyAccess::createPropertyAccessor(); 
    }

[Florin Cristea]

??= will also assign the value on first call, besides checking if it's set, meaning that the second time it gets reached it will have a value assigned and PropertyAccess::createPropertyAccessor() will no longer get called.
?? is just a classic isset check meaning the call to createProperyAccesor() is made every time it gets reached.
They're quite different although they look similar.

[Saymon Tavares]

thanks guy!

[Benjamin Delespierre]

Here's another one for you: extract variables from string using patterns

$str = "123:456";

preg_match('/(\d+):(\d+)/', $str, $matches);

list(, $a, $b) = $matches + [null, null, null];

var_dump($a, $b); // 123, 456