Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

A Cool (PHP) Class on Classes
Spent a lot of work over this past week for this morning's lesson, which saw me covering off Object-Oriented programming, using external class libraries and what's new in PHP5.

Have never been completely satisfied with this particular class in the past, so I crammed it full of what I figured would be interesting examples, which I figured would be appreciated particularly by the more advanced students in the class, while still trying to make it accessible to the beginner students.

So I looked at creating Adobe Acrobat files on-the-fly using the FPDF class library, making a bar graph and an analogue clock face using the GD graphic library, and then using PHP5's XML processing capabilities to tackle a simple listing of book titles.

I deviated from my recommended text in all of these areas, as it is weak in covering these particular subjects off, or too much mired in the PHP4 way of doing things –- a perenial problem it seems with many "updated" editions. Instead I came up with good, stripped-down versions of sample code for each of these sections based on material I found online from various sources, all of which were credited in the handout material.

The fellow who comes in from the Soo to take this class complimented me at the end of the class, saying that this class alone was worth the cost of it to him. Which was cool. ;-)