The digest of interesting news and materials from the world of PHP over the past two weeks, №15 (04/08/2013 - 04/22/2013)

We bring to your attention another collection with links to news and materials.

Enjoy reading!

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News and Releases

• PhalconEye v0.3.0 - New CMS running the compiled PHP framework Phalcon. Demo and code .
• React v0.3.0 - In the previous release of the digest , this wonderful tool implementing the Reactor pattern was mentioned. A new version is available with many changes and additions.
• PHP 5.5 beta3 is available. In the release there are actually only a few fixes , which means that the final version is not very long, however, the question of whether the next version will be beta or release candidate is still open.
• Releases of current PHP 5.4.14 and PHP 5.3.24 branches - As usual, we have a number of fixes , and all users are recommended to upgrade.
• Nomad PHP - virtual user group - Dozens of PHP user groups are active and actively developing around the world. Find the nearest group here or here . But if there is no user group in your city or nearby, then of course you yourself can become the organizer of such a community, but in addition you can become a member of the virtual group Nomad PHP, all activities and meetings of which take place exclusively online. The first “meeting” with a presentation by Rob Allen “Introduction to Zend Framework 2” has already been announced.
• Sylius - an ecommerce solution for Symfony2 - A free e-commerce platform based on Symfony 2 has acquired a new website and is now supported by KNP Labs .
• Yiinitializr - A new tool to quickly create a template project on Yii. Read more here and here .
• PHP Refactoring Browser - Alpha release is a completely new tool that allows you to solve automatic refactoring tasks that only IDEs were capable of, for example, extracting a method. In the post examples of the use of 3 currently available options for refactoring. The code on github .
• Compose - the composition of functions - Interesting library, which allows you to combine php-functions in the pipeline, with the result of the first function will be transferred to the second, the second - the third and so on.

Php

• Traits are a static code - Traits that appeared in PHP 5.4 have already been written more than once, but opinions on the justification for using them differ . The author of the post writes that treits have the same drawbacks as the use of static code, as well as some others.
• Features of logical comparison in PHP - In the digests mentioned excellent answers to StackOverflow from PHP core developer Nikita Popov. The link is an interesting information about comparison operators in PHP.
• Is micro-optimization worth the time spent on it? - The issue that has been discussed more than once has resulted in a more specific form: which is faster is_array($array) or $array === (array) $array ? Under the link the most detailed answer with implementation details.

Study materials

• Composer primer - Great great tutorial on how to use Composer. If you are not yet using this great tool for managing dependencies, then it's time to start by reading this comprehensive guide.
• Deploying PHP Applications with Phing - How much do you need to take to deploy your application? The author of the post believes that if more than 2, then you should think about automating the process, for example using Phing . The link is a good tutorial on this tool, which is based on Apache Ant .
• Is myopic PSR-0, or maybe you? - Around the PSR standards there really was a lot of controversy, and very often you can observe posts criticizing the PSR. After another such post, “PSR-0 is short-sighted,” one of the main participants and ideologist of the PHP-FIG group, Phil Sturgeon, wrote a post in which he answered all the burning issues of PSR-0, without hiding that the standard has a couple of unresolved questions , but, nevertheless, he copes with the task. It is worth paying attention to the comments, some of them are even larger than the post itself in terms of text and information.
• Cheat Sheet by PHPUnit vs. Phake - The author, using small examples, compares two popular tools for unit testing.
• Studying Rails (and Ruby) - An experienced PHP developer, a member of the PHP community and a speaker, was forced to learn and use Ruby on Rails for one of the projects. In his post, he, as a PHP developer, shares the gained experience and impressions of a new language and framework, pointing out the differences and superiority of one or the other.
• About stability Symfony - In his post, the creator of Symfony and the head of SensioLabs - Fabien Potencier, writes about the principle to be followed by the developers of the framework. He urges to focus on increasing stability (correcting errors, writing tests and documentation), rather than on implementing new features, as this not only improves the framework, but also attracts new users.
• Zend PHP Certification Tips and Tricks - If you are going to get certified by Zend PHP, be sure to check out this interview, as well as the previous two: one , two .
• Interview with the creator of PHPClasses.org - Manuel Lemos. - The representative of the Brazilian PHP community and the creator of PHPClasses.org - Manuel, answers questions about his experience in the PHP world and gives useful advice to developers.
• Automated backup to Google Drive using PHP - Using the official API client , the author implemented a small console script to copy files to Google Drive. The post contains some general information about using the Google Drive API.
• Expanding templates Twig - A small tutorial on expanding the basic features of the popular template engine with inheritance, using filters and functions.
• Chatting with a PHP expert - As an expert, Lorna Jane Mitchell answered questions, mostly giving useful tips for beginners. According to the link the full content of the conversation with links to materials.
• Psr-duh! - A small tutorial on refactoring code, in order to bring to a form conforming to PSR standards.
• Do we need a framework for this? Or hurry, PHP-FIG - In his post, the author writes that the use of frameworks is not always justified, and often you can get by using a set of libraries that solve specific problems. In this regard, the author urges PHP-FIG to do standardization of interfaces. In this case, it will be much easier to combine libraries and inject dependencies.
• Generating one-time links - A small tutorial that describes one of the ways to solve the problem of generating links that are available for use only once and have a limited time. Such links can be useful for all kinds of verification.
• HTTP - a protocol that a web developer must know - Post is recommended to anyone who has gaps in knowledge of the HTTP protocol. Basic information scheme of work, the structure of requests, response codes, considered the main headers. Examples and reference tools for study are attached.
• Plunge into Behat - Some personal experience and impressions from using a great BDD tool.
• We use Dice to implement dependencies in PHP - A small tutorial that shows how you can quickly implement a DI container for managing dependencies in your PHP application. Comes to the aid of a minimalistic, but powerful enough tool Dice .
• 6 things to consider when choosing a framework - The abundance of quality solutions among PHP-frameworks of course pleases, but on the other hand makes it difficult to choose. Of course, first of all I would like to give preference to the one with whom I worked the most, but first consider the arguments given by the author. Perhaps, for the next task, you should choose another framework.
• I was a bad PHP developer - Some personal experience and tips for self-improvement as a developer.
• Failed side project - Many developers in addition to the main work involved in their personal or team side projects. Having failed one such project, the author, nevertheless, gained valuable experience, which he shared in a note.
• Work in PHP with Tokenizer - Excellent habrapost, which provides examples of the use of lexer (tokenizer).
• Reflection in PHP - Tutorial, which describes the basic principles and shows examples of the use of reflection in PHP.
• The commandments of PHP - The author has collected and described several things that you should never do in PHP. But, as old Obi-Wan used to say: “Only the Sith are erecting everything into an absolute,” so one can argue with the author in some ways.
• Using SimplePie to read from news channels - Why not write your own aggregator due to the closure of Google Reader? The link is a small tutorial on the use of the library SimplePie , thanks to which working with RSS feeds becomes obscenely simple.
• 15 tips for MySQL users - Slides with very useful tips.
• Using Yii's ActiveRecord in a time manager game - A good habrapost in which the author shares the experience of extending the Yii framework to reduce the number of queries to the database.
• Screencast archive by Laravel 4 - A great new resource with compilation of screencasts on the Laravel framework. Those interested can record and send their own screencast.
• Aspect-oriented PHP programming with Go! - Author of the wonderful Go library! AOP has already published several posts on Habré: Getting rid of duplicate pass-through code in PHP We get acquainted with aspect-oriented programming in PHP , Fluid Interface Programming Template in PHP . This time English tutorial with examples of using this useful tool.

Link to the previous release.