The digest of interesting news and materials from the world of PHP over the past two weeks, No. 17 (05/06/2013 - 05/21/2013)

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

Enjoy reading!

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News and Releases

• Zend Framework 2.2.0 was released - The release brought several innovations, such as dynamic DDL queries and a lot of improvements.
• Google App Engine now supports PHP - Two weeks ago it was just a rumor, but fortunately the information was confirmed. First, there was a post on the developers blog, and then within the framework of Google I / O there was a presentation, the recording of which can be viewed here .
  So, in the cloud PaaS-hosting from Google implemented support for PHP . The environment interpreter is based on PHP 5.4 ( phpinfo ), however, access to the file system is denied for writing - it is supposed to use Google Cloud Storage. There are also a number of other restrictions .
  In addition, JetBrains immediately announced support for Google App Engine in PHPStorm . And even there is a small example of using GAE with Silex.
• PHP 5.5.0RC1 is available - As promised earlier, on May 9, the PHP development team announced the release of the first release candidate. RC2 is scheduled for May 23rd and then the final release.
• Releases of current branches: PHP 5.4.15 and PHP 5.3.25 - As usual, we have a number of fixes , and all users are encouraged to upgrade.
• The May issue of Web & PHP magazine - The following topics are covered in this issue: Time Travel with Git; Using PHPCR ; Practical tips for creating developer communities; Data modeling; About sprint retrospectives and others.
• PuPHPet - online graphic configurator Puppet & Vagrant - A great tool that allows you to set all the necessary parameters of the virtual machine: OS, installable packages, Apache, PHP, MySQL configuration, and get the config for Vagrant and raise the workstation with a single command. The tool code is available on GitHub .

Php

• Static code analysis tools for PHP - An excellent overview of static analysis tools available for PHP, including the already familiar Mess Detector and Code Sniffer, and the less well-known PHP Analyzer , as well as the Facebook toolkit Pfff .
• PHP syntax hack - HabrapTranslate a good tutorial, mentioned in the last issue . A small example shows how to change the syntax of a language with minimal C knowledge. Applying a small Zend Engine hack, the author changes the syntax of the class declaration.
• PHP is created to die - A good article in which the author defends the point of view about the failure of PHP in the case when the script should work long and continuously.
• Functional programming - how to write functional code in PHP - Functional programming in PHP has already been written here and here . Add to the list also this small post.
• Types and anonymous functions in PHP. Quack quack! - Excellent habrapost, in which the example demonstrates, in fact, the use of traits with anonymous functions.

Study materials

• New features in PHP 5.5 - If you have not followed the news on PHP 5.5, then read the slides from Julien Pauli, the release manager for this version.
• Yii 2.0 Review - Public preview of Yii 2 has aroused great interest among the community, which was satisfied with a number of posts. The link provides an excellent overview of new features and differences from Yii 1.1. In addition, previously published no less excellent habrapost Yii2. Acquaintance .
• Zend Framework 2 - hydrators, TableGateway models - In the post, the author writes about how using the marked components in ZF2, you can make the models completely independent of the data source.
• PHP Framework Bluz. Update - Excellent PHP microframe, which uses all the latest features of the language and takes into account the best development practices.
• Zend Webinars - Records of past webinars are always available on the Zend website, for example, on creating service components on ZF2 .
• How to write test and easily supported code in PHP - A good tutorial that shows a simple example of what should be avoided and vice versa, which should be used in the code to make it possible to write unit tests, and therefore make the code reliable.
• WebSocket (Sec-WebSocket-Version: 13) - implementation details, in particular in PHP - Habrapost, in which the author described the problems and difficulties encountered in the implementation of a web socket server in PHP .
• Disclosure of information about security issues in a convenient format - Based on discussions in PHP-FIG , the author writes that security issues in components and libraries should be made public as quickly as possible and in a standardized form in order to make centralized storage of vulnerability information possible. and automate checks, for example, using SensioLabs Security Checker .
• Getting to the PHP Zend Framework 2 for Oracle DB - The post shows how to modify the application from the ZF2 tutorial to use the Oracle database as a repository.
• ZendService_Api - microframe for API requests in PHP - It's difficult to name this library as a microframe, but, nevertheless, the author has created a good tool based on ZF2 components, which can be used to “communicate” with various APIs.
• Compiling PHP 5.5 from scratch - Want the latest PHP version for your platform? Follow the instructions in the post, install the necessary dependencies and compile PHP yourself.
• Improving cookie session security - In the post, the author writes about several PHP configuration options (session.cookie_httponly, session.use_only_cookies, session.cookie_secure) that will allow securing sessions.
• Maven and PHP - A good tutorial on using the traditional Java-world build tool as applied to PHP projects. In previous releases of digests Phing , an analogue of Apache Ant, another popular Java tool, was also mentioned many times.
• Composer and PSR-0 - friends, but not relatives - An excellent post in which the author explains that there is not and should not be a direct connection between PSR-0 and Composer.
• Specification or Testing: Behat vs. Codeception — The author writes about the difference between functional and acceptance testing, and why Codeception is preferred over Behat.
• Our failure as an industry - The author gives an overview of the current situation in web development, and argues that, despite the availability of the most diverse and powerful tools like never before, the industry as a whole has little focus on developing secure solutions. And the universally accepted approach of shifting responsibility must be stopped. Be responsible.
• Slides: Behat and Great APIs - Actually webinar slides about BDD and Behat (PDF) , as well as an API design report (PDF) .
• Boris is a small but reliable REPL for php - Quite recently, this tool was mentioned in the digest, this time a small review in a habrapost.
• Phalcon - the promised land for PHP? - Responding to the skepticism of Anthony Ferrara about PECL frameworks, the author of the post writes that PHP frameworks like Phalcon can really seriously influence the course of the “game”.
• Don't Avoid Regular Expressions - A little note about how comfortable using regular expressions can be.
• Offline processing in PHP using Advanced Queuing - Tutorial on using the queue service from Oracle.
• Use grep to search for vulnerabilities in PHP code - The post demonstrates how to find simple vulnerabilities in code by searching for potentially dangerous constructs.
• Responsible Silex Controllers - The author of the post created a small component for Silex, which returns data to the client automatically in the format in which they were requested. Convenient to implement API.
• Studying Rails (well, Ruby) - Habrapirev article, written by an experienced PHP-developer, a member of the PHP-community and a speaker who 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.
• We deal with digest authentication - In a post, the principles of authentication digest are described and an example implementation in PHP is given.
• A little more about migrations. PHP version - Habrapost with a tutorial on Ruckusing - a tool for implementing migration to PHP. Let me remind you that there is another good standalone implementation of migrations to PHP - Phinx .
• Google App Engine, PHP and Silex. Installing the Login Provider - Google did not have time to announce PHP support in GAE, as a small example of using the Silex mic framework was already in time.
• Create a video library with PHPixie - A good tutorial on PHPixie - fast and easy microfreemvorku.
• 5 reasons why the war of web platforms is over: PHP won with a score of 75% - Google says . Also, the author notes that the dominance of PHP does not last forever, and calls to remember that languages ​​are just tools, not religions.
• All slides from php [tek] 2013 - The conference season is in full swing, and quite recently a four-day conference devoted to PHP was held in Chicago. The link slides 42 reports presented at this conference.

Link to the previous release.