Very nice article for the good practices in php: article

1. Setup and configuration
   1.1. Keep Current
   1.2. Set sensible defaults
   1.3. Extensions
2. Use Composer
   2.1. Installing Composer
   2.2. Using Composer
   2.3. Install vs update
   2.4. Autoloading
3. Follow good design principles
   3.1. SOLID
   3.1.1. S - Single Responsibility Principle
   3.1.2. O - Open Closed Principle
   3.1.3. L - Liskov Substitution Principle
   3.1.3. I - Interface Segregation Principle
   3.1.4. D - Dependency Inversion Principle
4. Object calisthenics
   4.1. No more than one level of indentation per method
   4.2. Try not to use else
5. Unit testing
   5.1. Tools
   5.2. Tests are a specification
   5.3. Write your tests first
   5.4. What makes a good unit test
   5.5. When testing is painful

Execute the following commands in your terminal.

Download Xdebug - you will need to follow alternate instructions if you don't have PHP5 working on your machine already.

sudo apt-get install php5-xdebug

The package should modify your INI file for you, but just in case you need to edit it yourself open it up and make the following modification - on Ubuntu its typically at /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini - add the following line.

zend_extension="/usr/lib/php5/20110331/xdebug.so"

That path might be a little different on your system - just make sure its a fully qualified path to the xdebug.so file on your machine. Also remember to comment out any references to the Zend Debugger - you can't run both at the same time.

Now restart Apache.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You may also need want enable html_errors. Search for html_errors in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and make sure it is set to On. A restart of Apache is also required.

html_errors = On

Double-check with phpinfo() to make sure that everything is installed properly - you may also want to set configurations for Xdebug in your php.ini file.

sudo apt-get install sqlite php5-sqlite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If your phpinfo() is not showing the pdo_sqlite line (in my case, on my Ubuntu Server), you just need to run the lines above and then you'll be good to go.

CURL is AWESOME to do what you want ! It's a simple but effective command line tool : http://curl.haxx.se/

curl -i -X GET <URL>
curl -i -X GET <URL>
curl -i -X DELETE <URL>
curl -i -X POST -H '<headers>' -d '<data>' <URL>
curl -i -X PUT -H '<headers>' -d '<data>' <URL>

9 uses for cURL worth knowing

We're assuming that this is a local project, so let's install an instance of Composer just for the current project. Navigate to your project directory and run this:

$ curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Keep in mind that piping any download directly to a script interpreter (sh, ruby, php, etc...) is a security risk, so do read the install code and ensure you're comfortable with it before running any command like this.

For convenience sake (if you prefer typing composer install over php composer.phar install, you can use this command to install a single copy of composer globally:

$ mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
$ chmod +x composer

You may need to run those with sudo depending on your file permissions.