Build a Static Site Generator Using SPL Iterators

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Course Description

In PHP, we’re all familiar with the foreach, for, do-while, and while looping constructs, which help us quickly and easily iterate over data structures in our applications.

But did you know that they’re just the tip of the iceberg, and that you can use these constructs in a much more powerful way?

In this course, Envato Tuts+ instructor Matthew Setter will introduce you to SPL iterators, and teach you how to create iterator classes which allow you to use the looping constructs to iterate over your data in a more powerful, more flexible, and more elegant way than you’ve done before. Along the way, you’ll build a simple static site generator which reads markdown from a filesystem directory listing and creates hydrated value objects which model the data they contain.

What You’ll Learn

• Build a simple application, based on a stripped-down version of a podcast site.
• How the SPL allows us to overload, or augment, some of PHP’s basic lexicographical constructs.
• Working with core SPL classes.
• Retrieving episode data using FilterIterator and DirectoryIterator.
• How to iterate over the instantiated list of Episode objects and filter them by publish date.
• Initializing SPL iterators.

About the Instructor

Matthew Setter is an experienced software developer and freelance technical writer. He is the author of Zend Framework 2 Foundations and is regularly developing with PHP and related technologies. You can visit his website or connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.