PHP 8 On Point
Actual coverage
World Wide Web; development environment; syntax/types; strings/arrays; operators/control structures; functions; OOP; design patterns; error handling; modules/namespaces; Composer; requests/cookies/sessions; uploads; MySQL; a complete project; security.
Durable knowledge
- PHP executes on the server within an HTTP request lifecycle; output becomes the response.
- Separate input parsing, domain rules, persistence, and presentation.
- Types, visibility, interfaces, exceptions, namespaces, and dependency management make larger programs safer to change.
- Patterns are tradeoff-bearing structures, not decorations: factories centralize construction, adapters translate interfaces, strategies vary algorithms, and dependency injection exposes dependencies.
- Sessions establish server-side continuity but require secure cookie settings, regeneration, expiration, and CSRF protection.
- Uploads are untrusted: limit size/type, generate safe names, store outside executable paths, and scan when risk requires.
- Use prepared statements, contextual output escaping, password hashing, authorization, and secure error handling.
Project rule
Keep credentials out of source; validate on the server even when the client validates; never expose raw production exceptions.