PHP is experiencing a renaissance, though it may be difficult to tell with all of the outdated PHP tutorials online. With this practical guide, you'll learn how PHP has become a full-featured, mature language with object-orientation, namespaces, and a growing collection of reusable component libraries.

Author Josh Lockhart--creator of PHP The Right Way, a popular initiative to encourage PHP best practices--reveals these new language features in action. You'll learn best practices for application architecture and planning, databases, security, testing, debugging, and deployment. If you have a basic understanding of PHP and want to bolster your skills, this is your book.

• Learn modern PHP features, such as namespaces, traits, generators, and closures
• Discover how to find, use, and create PHP components
• Follow best practices for application security, working with databases, errors and exceptions, and more
• Learn tools and techniques for deploying, tuning, testing, and profiling your PHP applications
• Explore Facebook's HVVM and Hack language implementations--and how they affect modern PHP
• Build a local development environment that closely matches your production server