The 5th edition of this popular book has been fully updated for PHP 7, including replacing the PEAR package manager with Composer, and new material on Vagrant and PHP standards. It provides a solid grounding in PHP's support for objects, it builds on this foundation to instill core principles of software design and then covers the tools and practices needed to develop, test and deploy robust code.
PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice begins by covering PHP's object-oriented features. It introduces key topics including class declaration, inheritance, reflection and much more. The next section is devoted to design patterns. It explains the principles that make patterns powerful. The book covers many of the classic design patterns and includes chapters on enterprise and database patterns. The last segment of the book covers the tools and practices that can help turn great code into a successful project. The section shows how to manage multiple developers and releases with git, how to manage builds and dependencies with Composer. It also explores strategies for automated testing and continuous integration.
Taken together, these three elements: object fundamentals, design principles, and best practice, will help the reader develop elegant and rock solid systems.