Have you ever needed to maintain a project that wasn't yours? A project that, when you first opened it, gave you chills down your spine? Even without reading the code in detail, you could already tell it was a mess.

Maybe you couldn't pinpoint the exact problem, but this code simply looked odd, felt wrong.

Writing clean code; code that you enjoy working in; code that you can come back to, two or three years after writing it, and still feel comfortable changing; that's an art in itself. It's definitely a subjective topic — don't get me wrong; but there are many parts of "writing readable PHP" that can be mastered.

In the next few weeks, I'll focus on small tips that have a big impact on your code. If you're inspired by these tips, and want to dive deeper into the topic of readable code, make sure to head over to writing-readable-php.com and take a look at our full course.

We start our list with a very actionable tip. Take a look at this code:

public function getPage($url)
{
    $page = $this->pages()->where('slug', $url)->first();
    if (! $page) {
        return null;
    }
    if ($page['private'] && ! Auth::check()) {
        return null;
    }
    return $page;
}

Just like reading text, grouping code in paragraphs can be helpful to improve its readability. We like to say we add some "breathing space" to our code. Have a look:

public function getPage($url)
{
    $page = $this->pages()->where('slug', $url)->first();

    if (! $page) {
        return null;
    }

    if ($page['private'] && ! Auth::check()) {
        return null;
    }

    return $page;
}

Adding some empty lines to group related bits of code, goes a long way making something readable.