ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns - Object Oriented Programming Techniques

If you’re a web programmer new to Drupal, this book shows you which programming techniques you can use—and which you should avoid—when building custom web applications with this content management framework. Drupal has its own set of programming principles that require a different approach, and many programmers make mistakes when relying on skills they’ve used for other projects. The guidelines in this book help you through the transition by demonstrating which programming practices conform to the “Drupal way,” and which don’t.

If you’re familiar with PHP, you’ll quickly learn how to take advantage of the powerful Drupal API.

• Get a complete overview of Drupal, including Drupal core and add-on modules and themes
• Learn Drupal’s basic programming principles, such as the ability to customize behavior and output with hooks
• Discover common Drupal programming mistakes—and why hacking is one of them
• Explore specific areas where you can put your programming skills to work
• Learn programming tips and tools to help you perfect and debug your applications

Regular expressions are an extremely powerful tool for manipulating text and data. They are now standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB.NET and C# (and any language using the .NET Framework), PHP, and MySQL.

If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regular expressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener.

As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them.

Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions.

Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation.Topics include:

• A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools
• How the regular expression engine works
• Optimization (major savings available here!)
• Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want
• Sections and chapters on individual languages

Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Reviews of this new edition and the second edition:

"There isn't a better (or more useful) book available on regular expressions."

--Zak Greant, Managing Director, eZ Systems

"A real tour-de-force of a book which not only covers the mechanics of regexes in extraordinary detail but also talks about efficiency and the use of regexes in Perl, Java, and .NET...If you use regular expressions as part of your professional work (even if you already have a good book on whatever language you're programming in) I would strongly recommend this book to you."

--Dr. Chris Brown, Linux Format

"The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regex novice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full of useful and relevant examples...Regular expressions are valuable tools that every developer should have in their toolbox. Mastering Regular Expressions is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstanding resource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf. Ten out of Ten Horseshoes."

--Jason Menard, Java Ranch

Anyone familiar with Zynga's Farmville understands how fun and addictive real-time social games can be. This hands-on guide shows you how to design and build one of these games from start to finish, with nothing but open source tools. You'll learn how to render graphics, animate with sprites, add sound, validate scores to prevent cheating, and more, using detailed examples and code samples.

By the end of the book, you’ll complete a project called Tourist Resort that combines all of the techniques you’ve learned. You’ll also learn how to integrate your game with Facebook. If you’re familiar with JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, you’re ready to get started.

• Use HTML5’s canvas element to build smooth animations with sprites
• Create an isometric grid pattern for high-performance graphics
• Design a GUI that works equally well on mobile devices and PCs
• Add sound to your game with HTML5’s audio element
• Implement the game’s path-finding function with WebWorkers
• Build a client data model on the server with PHP and MySQL
• Make your game come alive with dynamic CSS3 objects

When it comes to creating dynamic web sites, the open source PHP language is red-hot property: used on more than 20 million web sites today, PHP is now more popular than Microsoft's ASP.NET technology. With our Cookbook's unique format, you can learn how to build dynamic web applications that work on any web browser. This revised new edition makes it easy to find specific solutions for programming challenges.

PHP Cookbook has a wealth of solutions for problems that you'll face regularly. With topics that range from beginner questions to advanced web programming techniques, this guide contains practical examples -- or "recipes" -- for anyone who uses this scripting language to generate dynamic web content. Updated for PHP 5, this book provides solutions that explain how to use the new language features in detail, including the vastly improved object-oriented capabilities and the new PDO data access extension. New sections on classes and objects are included, along with new material on processing XML, building web services with PHP, and working with SOAP/REST architectures. With each recipe, the authors include a discussion that explains the logic and concepts underlying the solution.

Create a real 2D game from start to finish with ImpactJS, the JavaScript game framework that works with the HTML5's Canvas element. Making video games is hard work that requires technical skills, a lot of planning, and—most critically—a commitment to completing the project. With this hands-on guide, you’ll learn how to use Impact with other technologies step-by-step.

You’ll pick up important tips about game design, and discover how to publish Impact games to the Web, desktop, and mobile—including a method to package your game as a native iOS app. Packed with screen shots and sample code, this book is ideal for game developers of all levels.

• Set up your development environment and discover Impact’s advantages
• Build a complete game with core logic, collision detection, and player and monster behavior
• Learn why a game design document is critical before you start building
• Display and animate game artwork with sprite sheets
• Add sound effects, background music, and text
• Create screens to display stats and in-game status
• Prepare to publish by baking your game files into a single file

What's the best approach for developing an application with JavaScript? This book helps you answer that question with numerous JavaScript coding patterns and best practices. If you're an experienced developer looking to solve problems related to objects, functions, inheritance, and other language-specific categories, the abstractions and code templates in this guide are ideal -- whether you're writing a client-side, server-side, or desktop application with JavaScript.

Written by JavaScript expert Stoyan Stefanov -- Senior Yahoo! Technical and architect of YSlow 2.0, the web page performance optimization tool -- JavaScript Patterns includes practical advice for implementing each pattern discussed, along with several hands-on examples. You'll also learn about anti-patterns: common programming approaches that cause more problems than they solve.

• Explore useful habits for writing high-quality JavaScript code, such as avoiding globals, using single var declarations, and more
• Learn why literal notation patterns are simpler alternatives to constructor functions
• Discover different ways to define a function in JavaScript
• Create objects that go beyond the basic patterns of using object literals and constructor functions
• Learn the options available for code reuse and inheritance in JavaScript
• Study sample JavaScript approaches to common design patterns such as Singleton, Factory, Decorator, and more
• Examine patterns that apply specifically to the client-side browser environment