PHP Annotated Monthly – September 2016
September 2016
“What??? Where was August?” we hear you cry. All will be revealed as Gary Hockin compiles the new style list of all that’s good from around the web, in PHP Annotated Monthly.
Let me apologize for the lack of Annotated Monthly in August. It was my plan to do the roundup while I was on holiday in a campsite in France, but the shocking quality of Internet access made the article impossible to write. We’ve wanted to tweak the format slightly, and I’ve wanted to release this post on the first working day of the month, so we’ve taken this opportunity to do both. This Annotated Monthly rounds up everything that I can find since the last one so you won’t miss anything! Let me know what you think.
More good news; you can now get PHP Annotated Monthly delivered to your inbox so you’ll never need to miss the monthly roundup gain. Sign up here and get next months delivered right to you.
PHP and Development
Latest PHP versions are 7.0.10 and 5.6.25. If you’re running anything older, you’re on your own. More interestingly this month, PHP 7.1 beta 3 was released. While I haven’t had a chance to compile and test PHP 7.1 yet (it’s on a long list of things to do), the new features look increasingly impressive, particularly the `void` return types. If you’re interested in testing your project with PHP 7.1, then Zend’s DevZone has you covered. Check out Testing your project with PHP 7.1.
While we are talking PHP 7, Michelangelo van Dam tells us how to Compile PHP 7 on Mac OS X 10.11 “El Capitain”, Thijs Feryn explains What are Type Errors in PHP 7? and Joseph Silber informs us on The new Closure::fromCallable() in PHP 7.1. Rob Allen’s post “Using HTTP/2 with PHP 7 on Mac” is absorbing (and I’m not only saying that because Rob is my friend). I also very much enjoyed reading “Writing a Hello World PHP 7 Extension” by Alex Bowers. I’ve not looked into PHP internals or writing extensions much, but this was written in a way that even I could understand it.
Other notable posts from PHP and Development this month:
- Quick Tip: Convenience Hacks for Passing Data to Views
- Building a CMS: phpPress
- The Proximity Rule?
- Using Bitwise Instead of Booleans
- Build a PHP chatbot in 10 minutes
- Decouple Your Framework for Easy Replacement
- A Pokemon Crash Course on CouchDB
- The traits of a proficient programmer
- What “Full Stack” really means to the job market
- Chris Tankersley: My Docker Setup
- Get Started With CouchDB Using PHP and Guzzle
- Hassle-Free Filesystem Operations during Testing? Yes Please!
- Composer & What You Should Know
- How we broke PHP, hacked Pornhub and earned $20,000 (NSFW)
- Understanding Dependency Injection Containers
- Cleaning up Code: Is Refactoring for Aesthetics worth It?
- PHP: Allowed memory size exhausted
- PHP, Arduino, and Minecraft? Connecting an Arduino to PHP!
This is a long bulleted list of articles to read. I will be including a bulleted list each month going forward, but it won’t be this long. There were so many items I wanted to mention since July that this was the only manageable way I could present them.
Frameworks and Libraries
Laravel has released a new version 5.3; the release notes read like it was a new major version, so congratulations to all involved. As you can imagine, we had a slew of good articles about the new features in 5.3, including Easily Send Quick Updates Through Slack, SMS, Email, and more, Easy and Fast Emails with Laravel 5.3 Mailables, Customizing pagination templates in Laravel 5.3, plus much more.
One of the more intriguing posts I read in the last few weeks was by Matthew Setter, where he investigated Can You Create Apps in Zend Expressive as Easily as With Laravel? Matthew looked at his recent experiences working with Laravel as a new user and compared the ease-of-use features with how easy it would be to achieve the same end in a Zend Expressive application. While I’m not a big fan of $x vs. $y posts usually, I thought Matthew made a fair and impartial comparison, and it was fascinating to me. Matthew then went on to explain How To Use Laravel’s Eloquent ORM with Zend Expressive, and eventually How To Simplify Zend Expressive Configuration with ConfigProviders. Matthew has been putting an enormous amount of effort into his Master Zend Framework blog recently, and it’s really paying off.
Moving efficiently on to Zend Expressive and Zend Framework, Matthew Weier O’Phinney blogged on Using Composer to Autoload ZF Modules which explains how the ZF ecosystem is leveraging Composer plugins to make managing your components and modules much easier. The official framework blog also posted End-to-end encryption with Zend Framework 3. Long time Zend Framework aficionado Robert Basic post Events in a Zend Expressive application which explains how the Zend\EventManager works in expressive, and Using Tactician in a Zend Expressive application which explains how to use the Tactician command bus with Zend Expressive. Creating a content-based Error Handler for Zend Expressive is also worth reading.
Symfony has posted Introducing the new Symfony Documentation, an explanation on how Symfony have restructured their documentation. I also enjoyed Securing client-side public API access with OAuth 2 and Symfony on Codevate.com and Quick Tip: Testing Symfony Apps with a Disposable Database on SitePoint. Also worth reading is How To Create Simple Rest API In Symfony 3.1.
Other interesting articles in Frameworks and Libraries:
- Drupal 8 Accessibility Features
- Testing Your Drupal Site with Behat
- Framework-Agnostic PHP Cronjobs Made Easy with Crunz!
- Local Composer for Everyone! A Conference-Friendly Satis Setup
- Looking at Ramsey UUID
- Sculpin Extended: Customizing Your Static Site Blog
- Building a WordPress-Powered Front End With the WP REST API and AngularJS: Intro & Set
Community and Events
Most importantly I would like to share Lorna Mitchell’s post “Joind.In Needs Help“. The Joind.in project is a website that allows speakers to receive feedback from conference attendees, either to bask in the glow of a job well done, or to understand how they can improve their talk. It’s an incredibly welcoming project and has been the first port of call for many current open source contributors. If you have been thinking about getting involved in open source, now is the time as this crucial project needs some help.
The Speaker Package by Stefan Koopmanschap outlines what Stefan looks for in a speaker’s package before submitting to a conference. It’s an important consideration, and Stefan makes valid points very well. Anna Filina blogged on Confoo opening it’s Call for Papers in ConFoo Montreal 2017 Calling for Papers. I also enjoyed an interview with Josh Lockhart on the CloudWays blog – Josh Lockhart Discusses Slim Framework And Photography.
In the podcasting world, things are really picking up again:
- Voices of the ElePHPant – Interview with Matt Stauffer (where Matt gets his time from is anyone’s guess, that man is more like a machine), Interview with Michael Moussa, Interview with Phil Jackson, Interview with Robert McFrazier, Interview with Steve Grunwell, Interview with Vesna Kovach, Interview with John Kelly,
Interview with Woody Gilk, Interview with Matthew Turland, Interview with Adam Harvey, Interview with Brian Retterer, Interview with Colin O’Dell. Remind me not to miss another Annotated Monthly again. - Self-appreciation all around in Dev Hell with two surprisingly enjoyable episodes – Episode 80: Lifestyles of the Moderately Privileged and Internet Famous and Episode 81: It Feels Good to Be a D-List Internet Superstar. Good job, Ed and Chris.
- PHP Town Hall no movement. Phil was too busy feeding cider to a turtle while riding his BMX even to consider recording.
- PHP Round Table are doing good things again – 050: PHP For Beginners, 051: What happened to PHP 6? and 052: Happy Birthday PHP Roundtable! were all very enjoyable and informative.
I’m always open to listening to new podcasts, so if you know of one that isn’t mentioned here, please let me know!
In September, you can find me at SwanseaCon, DrupalCon Dublin and PHP North West. If you see me and have PhpStorm questions, just want to say hello, or want to tell me how much these Annotated Monthly posts improve your month, then please do!
See you in October – Gary and the PhpStorm Team
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