Nugsoft PHP Best Practice and Standards Guide Table of content Introduction Purpose of the Guide Target Audience General Principles Code Readability Consistency Simplicity Coding Standards Naming Conventions Variables Functions Classes Constants Formatting Indentation Line Length Blank Lines Comments Project Structure Directory Structure File Naming PHP Specific Standards PHP Tags Strings Arrays Control Structures Error Handling Namespaces and Use Statements OOP Standards Classes and Objects Inheritance and Interfaces Traits Abstract Classes Design Patterns Security Best Practices Input Validation Password Hashing Output Escaping Prepared Statements Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Secure File Uploads Database Interaction Using PDO or MySQLi Avoiding SQL Injection Performance Optimization Caching Optimizing Queries Profiling and Benchmarking Testing Unit Testing Version Control Git Workflow Branch Naming Conventions Commit Messages Tagging and Versioning Documentation PHPDoc Standards Inline Comments API Documentation Deployment and Maintenance Deployment Best Practices Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Monitoring and Logging