Hi Stephen, There are a lot of considerations. If you're adopting a more functional approach, certainly files can contain lots functions, perhaps grouped within a class as static methods to take advantage of PHP's autoloading capabilities. I don't worry about the size of file in this case, but I do work hard to make sure the functions are related. This helps me find and use things later. If you're following an OOP paradigm, then you usually try to break the code up into classes, trying to limit classes so the have a single responsibility. Again, while you can put more than one class in a file, making use of autoloading is simplified by limiting to one class per a file. When I've programmed using Objective C, I've noticed my classes get pretty big (as this seems to be more common in these libraries), but I tend to make my Python and PHP classes smaller. As Per Jessen noted in his reply, I've also seen performance issues with code bases that are broken up in such a manner that each request requires including many files. If it's other people's code, I sometimes even analyze the call stack for includes and then preprocess the files that are used on most requests into one file (using a bash script, simple parser, etc.) The one hard rule I try to follow regarding files is that I keep side effects isolated from function/class/etc. This is probably more due to my appreciation for Haskell, but I'm thankful it's listed in PHP-FIG, to: http://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-1/#2-3-side-effects Enjoy, Adam On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 3:49 PM, Stephen <stephen-d@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I have made a number of web sites using PHP and mySQL. These included a > control panel for adding and maintaining content. > > I am stepping up and creating a site that will require sessions, private > areas and user registration functions. > > I have looked at samples and note that they all use many small files. I > see that as being difficult to manage. > > But I have also looked at the code for a PHP bulletin board. Many, many > small files, so I see that it is a common practise. But I see it as > complicated and difficult to manage. > > For my control panel code I have all the routines, about 10, to process > POSTS in one file. It works fine. > > Now activity is low, but that will also be the case with my new site. > > So my question: Is small, single function, files the best practise, or I > am just fine in combing many functions into larger "library" files. > > Thank you for your thoughts. > > -- > Stephen > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >
