PHP is often regarded as the cornerstone for building flexible and feature-rich web applications. Because it is relatively easy to learn, novice programmers can easily create applications from scratch using PHP. However, given the size of these applications, the maintenance effort is daunting. Fortunately, the mature programming community has provided some solutions, including design patterns. These repeatable solutions to the same problems have been used in other programming languages ??for many years. The goal of PHP Design Patterns is to tie PHP to earlier programming languages ??by applying proven design patterns to PHP applications.