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Is UML still helpful when developping PHP/Mysql applications using the PHP procedural programming approach? How is that done?
Thank you for your reply.
What happens in the "process" and "output" are in PHP's direct domain. There is always a clear start, and a clear end. Hence why PHP is a procedural language.
However... understand that today PHP offers object support, to a large degree. You can create classes, methods, objects, etc and manipulate them as you would any other language. The key difference between PHP and a language like C++/Java, is that PHP will take a request, execute, & terminate; while C++/Java will handle a request then execute (still running/active when done, or terminate if need be). PHP inherently lacks this simply due to environment (the internet/web; note that PHP does now support standalone compiled applications). But these are differences due to environment.
Note that UML diagrams used for other languages (Java/etc) revolves around the classes used, methods, etc (documents the objects, flow, etc). This is because it is object-oriented.
Even though PHP is procedural by nature, you can still achieve object oriented programming with PHP by doing your coding via classes/methods/etc (instead of just line by line by line).
So Java is object oriented; but PHP can be too. So, apply UML diagrams in the same manner! Document the classes, methods, processes, etc of your PHP just as you would if they were Java/etc classes/etc.
Note however, that if you setup your PHP code itself as procedural (ex: no classes, no methods; no significant use of functions to module-ize processes; etc)... then you cannot really use UML diagrams as traditionally used, because UML diagrams for software are inherently intended towards object oriented programming.
However, your code is still useful/functional, but in a procedural way. Your code is a single process, but it has many sub-processes. Suppose your code is about processing a submitted web form. Sub-processes within your code could be: (1) get form values; (2) check/validate form values; (3) process form action [modify, add, delete, etc something]; (4) display/return output/results. You can use this knowledge of the PROCESS to develop a UML activity diagram.
Overall, UML diagrams are widely used in industry to help document/plan application code. Since most professional programs do run in compiled languages like C++/Java, UML serves the purpose of documenting/planning well. But because PHP is ~solely used on the internet, and often coded by amateur/moderate programmers (loosely speaking)... UML diagrams are ~rarely employed to document/plan PHP software/code, even when the code is object oriented.
Hopefully this can give you some help and insight into your question.
