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PHP Cheat Sheet (V1)

I'm fed up with having to visit php.net to look things up. This A4 cheat sheet is designed to sit by your desk and make your life easier.

There is a newer version of this cheat sheet!

The PHP cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a developers desk, to make life a bit easier. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size PHP cheat sheet.

Function List

Thumbnail highlighting function list. Probably the biggest problem with PHP is its inconsistency. Some function names use underscores, some don't. Some are of the form "verb object" and some are "object verb". Some use "2" instead of "to". The side sections of the cheat sheet list many of the most commonly used functions in PHP and are there to provide a quick reference to check function names.

SuperGlobals

Thumbnail highlighting superglobals list. In PHP, SuperGlobals are available at any point in a script, and allow access to data from the user and session date, as well as information about server settings and environmental data. This section contains a list of SuperGlobal variable names.

Date Formatting

Thumbnail highlighting date formatting. There are, as I'm sure you are aware, a huge number of options when it comes to date formatting, and there are few people who remember all of them. This section of the cheat sheet lists the various options, followed by a description, and an example where appropriate.

Regular Expression Syntax

Thumbnail highlighting regular expression syntax. Many people have trouble with regular expressions, and the first step to coming to grips with them is to become familiar with the various symbols used in regular expressions and their meaning. This section lists these symbols and describes their meaning.

PCRE Modifiers

Thumbnail highlighting PCRE modifiers. "PCRE" stands for "Perl Compatible Regular Expressions". In PHP, this refers to functions like "preg_replace" and "preg_split". The patterns used in these functions can have modifiers applied to them, and this section list those modifiers and what they do.

Function Argument Orders

Thumbnail highlighting function argument ordering. One of the other major inconsistencies in PHP is function argument ordering. Functions that are very very similar often completely opposite ordering of arguments. This section simply lists a few of the common ones people are sometimes confused by, or that people find easy to forget.

fopen() Modes

Thumbnail highlighting fopen modes. fopen() is a widely used function and has several modes in which it can operate, depending on whether you want to read or write to a file, and what you want to do with data already in that file. This section lists those modes and what each does.

Download

So now that you know what it does, please feel free to print out the PHP cheat sheet:

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And finally, if you like the cheat sheets, and want to say thanks, please consider buying me something from my Amazon Wishlist. Thankyou very much to those who have already hunted it down and sent me something nice - I'm very grateful!

PHP Cheat Sheet (V1) was posted on 22 April 2005 and has been tagged with code, webdev, development, cheatsheet, cheat, reference, programming, php, web, webdesign, tools and cheatsheets. Tweet This!