The digest of interesting news and materials from the world of PHP for the last two weeks No. 28 (October 6–20, 2013)

We bring to your attention the next selection with links to news and materials.

Enjoy reading!

News and Releases

• Apigility - At a recent ZendCon conference , the Apigility tool was introduced, which allows you to instantly create applications that implement the REST API on the Zend Framework 2. They also promise integration with Zephir, which will allow users to improve the performance of APIs created using Apigility.
  A video demo is available , as well as a couple of posts with first impressions and comments: Exploring Apigility , Testing Apigility .
  
• PHP 5.5.5 - An update to the latest interpreter branch has been introduced. In addition to a number of corrections, the release also includes an OPCache update: the opcache_compile_file function has been added , which allows you to load a file into the cache without executing it directly.
• PHP 5.4.21 - The 5.4 branch has also been updated . The release contains a dozen fixes .
• PHP support in the Google App Engine! - In May of this year, support for PHP in the App Engine was announced on Google I / O, and now this feature is available to all users without restrictions.
• Symfony CMF 1.0.0 - The long-awaited first stable version of Symfony CMF has been released . A detailed look is here .
• HHVM 2.2.0 - A new version of the virtual machine for PHP from Facebook. HHVM is now available as packages for popular Linux distributions. In addition, the release includes a lot of changes and boasts support for most popular PHP frameworks.
• Codeception 1.7 - Fresh release of a great testing tool with WebDriver on board.

Php

• PSR-2 and CodeSniffer - Success Story - Amendments and clarifications have now been added to PSR standards. And the first amendment for the PSR-2 has already been made. In a post about where the idea came from, how the decision was made and what it gave.
• RFC: Expectations - Suggestion to replace the current implementation of assert () with an improved one - expect.
  
  By the way, the proposal for anonymous classes was rejected , while for nested classes it was still withdrawn.

Instruments

• appserver - A multi -threaded application server for PHP to PHP. Fresh interviews with the creators are also available .
• Clockwork - An extension for the Chrome browser that adds a tab with PHP debugging information to Developer Tools.
• PlacePhant - Use PHP elephants as placeholder images.
• Requests - A handy library for making HTTP requests.
• atoum - A good alternative to PHPUnit for implementing unit testing in PHP.
• Piwik - Want your Google Analytics statistics tool? Try Piwik.

Learning Materials

• Active Record vs Data Mapper - A small comparison of two popular design patterns for working with data, the advantages and disadvantages of each.
• Using PHP web sockets - An example of creating a small application using the Ratchet library .
• We create a web application on Symfony 2: Bootstrapping - The first post in a series of tutorials on creating an application on the Symfony 2 framework. In the first part, about the initial installation, as well as a bit about the configuration of routes and the database.
• Deploying repositories in services on Symfony2 - A note on how, by implementing a separate repository instead of the entire EntityManager, you can make the application code on Symfony2 + Doctrine better.
• Autocompletion of many parameters - In the case when the function accepts many parameters, it is convenient to combine them into an array, but then the tips from the IDE are lost. As a solution, the author suggests using a chain of methods.
• Using Event Dispatcher in a Silex Application - A small note with an example of using the component.
• Tricks and Tricks of PHPUnit - Some useful recommendations for testing with PHPUnit.
• Autoload against combining classes into one file - A small test of two approaches to connecting classes.
• Responsive Images Using Picturefill and PHP - Tutorial on using Picturefill with an example of a simple application with Slim framework and ImageMagick extension.
• Sharding with MySQL Fabric - A small tutorial on using the recently released MySQL Fabric tool to implement sharding in your PHP application. Read more about MySQL Fabric here .
• OAuth Middleware for Slim - An example of the implementation of the middleware component for the Slim framework.
• How to preload ACLs to improve performance - The author shares an idea that improves the performance of a Symfony2 application.
• Introduction to Redbean - Tutorial on using the lightweight ORM library for PHP.
• Overview of Symfony2 Components: Routing - Continuation of a series of small posts on basic components from Symfony2. Earlier there were: HttpFoundation and HttpKernel .
• About ContainerAware - “ContainerAware is the new singleton,” the author writes. He considers the implementation of the DI container and, in particular, the use of the ContainerAware interface in Symfony 2, as bad practice and sets out arguments to support his opinion.
• Sublime Text and Jedi - Use Sublime as an IDE for PHP development.
• Virtualize your stack with Vagrant and Puppet - A detailed video tutorial on using Vagrant and Puppet.
• Zephir - create PHP extensions without knowledge C - Review post about a new language developed by the Phalcon team.
• Create a module for Drupal 7 - Tutorial on creating a module from scratch.
• Personal Maps - A large series of articles that describe the entire cycle of creating a full-fledged web application from scratch. Used by Yii Framework and Angular JS.
• Deploying Symfony2 on Engine Yard - Continuing the post on deploying PHP applications on popular PaaS hosting.
• Composer - Crash Course - Composer at a glance for those who haven't tried it yet.
• Laravel 4: Packages - Continuation of the series of tutorials on Laravel 4. Previously, there was already about authentication , Access Control List , deployment and the API .
• Rails-like console for PHP - The author described a way to launch PHP interactive mode with a loaded application. It is enough to use the auto_prepend_file directive . Examples for Magento and WordPress are included.
• We need a closure - A detailed explanation of what a closure is, how and when to use them in PHP.
• DIY WordPress Pentest - A small guide to researching WordPress sites for security.
• Drupal 8 - revolutionary changes - An overview of the innovations of the upcoming version of Drupal.
• Laravel Installation, configuration, creation and deployment of the application - A huge comprehensive tutorial on using the Laravel framework.
• Deobfuscation of a backdoor without a single alphanumeric character - A detailed analysis of the shell itself . Bravo!
• Package Caching for Composer - Briefly about setting up a local package cache.
• Phalcon PHP framework. Work with annotations
• Regenix: New non-standard MVC framework for PHP - Description of the features of the Play influenced framework! framework and Java language.

Materials from past conferences

• Laracon EU 2013 - Video footage of reports from the Laravel framework conference in Amsterdam.
• ZendCon 2013 - The largest PHP conference was held in the first half of October. Available slides 56 reports , videos , as well as a report of one of the participants.
• PHPNW 2013 - Slides 31 reports from the Manchester conference.
• PHP Frameworks Day - Available materials and video reports from the conference held in Kiev. There are also reports of participants here , here and here .

Interesting

• Interview with the creators of PHPWomen - Not so long ago, an exclusively female group of PHP users was created - PHPWomen . The link is an interview with the creators, as well as comments from men.
• Stop pretending that PHP is a good language - The author urges you to recognize the obvious, in his opinion, PHP flaws.
• Podcast: “Elephant in the Room” - Added to the list of PHP podcasts: Konstantin Kudryashov (creator of Behat, Mink and phpspec2) and Mathias Verraes recorded the first release.
• Verbs in class names - The author shares thoughts on how using natural language in class names can be useful.
• PHP in a tweet - A selection of PHP tools whose code fits in a single tweet. For example, microframework µ . Join the game!
• Facebook source code for August 2007 - Code index.php and search.php once leaked to the web.

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