PHP 5 Social Networking [Paperback]

This book walks chapter by chapter about the process of building a social network, with a structure and features mostly grabbed from Facebook ones (friends, statuses, profiles, events and groups).

It is done from scratch using PHP5 & MySQL, with a custom built lightweight REST-like MVC and a basic templating system (looks like grabbed from PHPBB forums).

The author does a nice selection of design patterns to apply to the architecture, with clear and concise definitions of them, but then the code... starts to get messy.

- There is almost no OO (sometimes looks as Composition, but in general just looks as non-refactored code). Structuring the code to use a /lib/ folder (ok for - helpers) to place Model related code there (and sometimes even with presentation logic) is neither clean nor good.
- Uses PHP tricks (like func_get_args() ) instead of well defined parameters, how builds the views and templates is not the most flexible way (but at least is clean).
- Does some ugly but typical PHP developer things, like using 0 instead of NULL/FALSE, modifying function parameters to store temporal data... I disagree with such unproper practices.
- Classes dont respect much the layers. The controllers have a mess of Model access and DB queries, the authentication component sets template errors (html format included!) and reads POST params...
- Variable names are sometimes terrible: $pp, $u, $ike... Also there is almost no use of PHP switch statements (why?).
- DB Queries are unoptimal, apart from doing really expensive paging calculations. Using strings to store DB dates is really ugly, and forces to use LIKE statements which are costly in processing time.
- Doing DB queries on class constructors ins one of the ugliest and worst things you can do, because so many things can fail.
- Proposed erorr handling is pretty weak and even unsafe in some parts (at least could break the site).

That said, almost all the code is explained (sometimes even line by line), perfect for reading instead of paragraphs and then big chunks of code.

Has some mentions to CAPTCHA systems, importing contacts/friends from other networks, and other interesting features (but no actual code is provided).

In the later chapters, builds a proof of concept of a REST-like API, unversioned and tightly coupled with the website. The book then ends with a quick pass about some pretty basic hosting, SEO, monetization and growth/scaling.

The code can be more or less easily ported to other languages, and the foundations are not bad for a typical low-scale web project, but if you plan for a medium size, you will need to do some serious refactoring and cleaning to the code.

Not bad for beggining into the social networks development segment, but if you have experience on them this book will be too basic and without any advanced technique.

PHP 5 Social Networking is simply a must buy for anyone interested in the intricacies of developing their own social networking website. You'll be grounded in developing your own simple yet effective framework,(yes you could plum for an off the shelf product, but building your own will make you into a real expert). This is a book you will have to come back to time and again, as there are gold nuggets which you will want to implement in your own work - I'm thinking about status streams - chapter 7.
Now all that is needed is the Social Networking Development for the mobile platform - and you'll have the perfect set.

The tag line of the book "Create a powerful and dynamic social networking website in PHP by building a flexible framework" sums up pretty well the main aims of the book. It starts off by giving an introduction to social networks: the definitions, existing services and software-solutions as well as why and when you might want to develop your own (Chapter 1).

Assuming you need your own solution it then goes on with planning and designing the framework which will serve as the platform for the further development of your social network site (Chapter 2). The next chapters (Chapter 3 through 10) goes systematically through how to implement features such as registration, relationships, status stream, events, groups, API etc.

It then finishes off with discussions around deployment, security and maintenance (Chapter 12), marketing and monetizing (Chapter 13) and finally a chapter about performance - Chapter 14: Planning for growth.

My thoughts

The short version: I like the book. It's a recommended read for people wanting to learn more about extensible application frameworks suited for the web as well as examples of developing and implementing social features.

The slightly longer version: I like the fact that Michael (Peacock, I do not speak about my self in third person... usually) follows a systematic approach the whole way through and focuses on well known best practices. These includes data sanitation, MVC, design patterns and encourages the reader to just use the exapmles as inspiration and a starting point.

I would like the chapter about performance (Chapter 14: Planning for growth) to be a little more comprehensive though, but it's really more suited for several books of it own and Michael does give a nice overview of some of the options and techniques available which in turn can point the reader in possible directions for further reading.

The nitpicking: The editors should also have done a better job with the typography related to the code examples as they can be a little hard to read sometimes with lot's of linewraps etc, as well as some minor typos which sometimes can cause a little confusion.

The HTML-purist in me do feel a little bad about some of the HTML/CSS-examples though, but that's not the focus of the book.

Who it's for

The author assumes the reader knows the basics of PHP 5, OOP and preferably some knowledge regarding software design patterns but that's not required.

Sidenote: The techniques listed in this book is not limited to social networks so there are a lot of good information here about how to develop a framework in general. The "Social"-bit is just for the buzz