PHPClasses.org: 8 defensive programming best practices to prevent breaking your sites
As anyone who’s been developing applications (web or otherwise) knows, there are certain things that you just don’t do when you’re doing things like adding features or changing the code of a production application. There are some general rules to follow and this new article on the PHPClasses.org website reminds us of just a few.
This article describes software development practices that have been used to prevent problems that can break Web sites.
Included in his list are things like:
- Handle unexpected conditions
Test your code - Monitor your site errors and act upon them
- Do not disclose errors to the users
- Do what you can as you can never get defensive enough
He also recommends two resources for some additional reading – the Wikipedia entry for “defensive programming” and a chapter from Getting Real (from 37 Signals) about how to “Get Defensive”.