The digest of interesting news and materials from the world of PHP over the last two weeks, No. 19 (06/03/2013 - 06/17/2013)

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

Enjoy reading!

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News and Releases

• Symfony 2.3.0! First release with long term support! - A new version of one of the most popular PHP frameworks has been released, and the first minor update appeared almost immediately. This release is noteworthy because it will be supported until 2016. If you are not sure which version to use, then there is a useful instruction especially for you, which in addition to the recommendations contains a roadmap for the development of the framework. A post was also written on how to update the symfony version of the project with minimal effort.
  By the way, the site of the framework - symfony.com will now be multilingual , anyone can help in translating the site using the corresponding repository on GitHub .
• PHP 5.5 RC3 is available - Fixed several bugs and it is assumed that this will be the last release candidate, and already on June 20 we can expect the final version.
• PHP 5.4.16 and PHP 5.3.26 are available. Current branches have also been updated. Fixed bugs , including security , all users are encouraged to upgrade.
• June issue of Web & PHP magazine - The following topics are covered in the latest issue: Introduction to document-oriented databases using the example of MongoDB; PHP inside out: Julien Pauili about interpreter internals; The life of a developer Wordpress plug-ins; other.
• Meet the HTML5 parser and serializer for PHP - The authors revived the php5lib library that died a couple of years ago: rewrote the parser and serializer, added composer support, and got a new useful tool as a result .
• Pinboard - we are pumping Pinba to monitor PHP - A great addition to pinba - real-time server for monitoring and collecting statistics in PHP, allowing you to collect information not only in real time, but also for long periods, and then view it in a convenient form.

Php

• The PHP Internals Book - For those who are interested in how PHP works inside, as well as for those who would like to develop extensions or even participate in the development of the language itself by the three leading members of the core team: Julien Pauli, Anthony Ferrara and Nikita Popov - was work has begun on the book. The book is mainly designed for developers who have C programming experience, but the information, as far as possible, will be provided in a form that is understandable to those who have not dealt with the C language.
  Work on the book is still ongoing, but a chapter is already available in which the structure of classes and objects is considered.
• What kind of php framework are you using? - On Habré slipped a survey about the popularity of various PHP-frameworks. The result is rather unexpected, especially in comparison with the past. by polling or, for example, with data from GitHub .
• Adopting PHP Versions - Another review of statistics using different PHP versions.

Study materials

• Why is phalcon faster than any other php framework? - The post reveals some details of the internal implementation of the really fastest PHP framework.
• Proc_Open - communication with the outside world - A good tutorial in which basic concepts of a pipeline are first given in Unix , and then the use of proc_open is described, an example is given.
• Parallel testing using PHPUnit and ParaTest - An excellent step-by-step tutorial on how to run parallel execution of PHPUnit tests. In addition to ParaTest, the post also considers the Paraunit tool, which solves the same problem. An example of using ParaTest for parallel execution of Selenium tests is also given. Those who are interested in the topic of parallel testing should familiarize themselves with the excellent parallelization of unit tests , if they have not already done so.
• Packing a Sümfony application into one file - introduction - With this post, the creator of Symfony, Fabien Potencier, begins a series of articles on how to merge a full symfony into one file. For a start, he talks about the reasons why and when it can be useful.
• Tips for developers - The post contains really useful tips from an experienced developer and head of a PHP user group.
• Laravel 4 on Google AppEngine - A large and detailed step-by-step tutorial on deploying a standard Laravel4 application on a cloud hosting service from Google, which recently acquired PHP support.
• Pseudo-random vs. True Random - A small experiment in which an image generated using rand () demonstrates how “not random” a sequence of generated numbers is. Read more about random number generators in PHP here .
• Best Practices PhpStorm - an ideal workflow for PHP developers - Record a webinar on how to use a great IDE. It will be especially useful to those who recently started using PhpStorm, but also experienced users have something to spy on.
• Writing music with PHP - Habrapirevod of the article published in the last issue of the digest, in which the author shows how to generate a not entirely random sequence of notes. For this purpose, it is proposed to use the Markov chains mechanism and training on some data set.
• Debugging Laravel with MonoLog and FirePHP - A brief note that shows how to set up logging output from Monolog to FirePHP.
• Interview with Vito Chin - One of the developers of the Gmagick extension and co-author of the book PHP Development in the Cloud talks about his development experience and gives useful tips.
• PHP REST API Frameworks - An overview of PHP frameworks that you can use to create a REST API. The author, unfortunately, did not make comparisons; the review is an impressive list of available solutions with brief descriptions and links.
• Whoops! PHP bugs for cool guys - Tutorial on using a small library that allows you to display beautiful and most important informative error pages and unhandled exceptions.
• We manage a complex system with the help of the “facade” pattern — a small post in which the essence of the “facade” is revealed, and its use is demonstrated in the simplest examples.
• PHPUnit: a simple syntax for creating mock objects - The author has implemented an extension for PHPUnit, which allows to significantly simplify the creation of mock objects, making it short and intuitive.
• Configuring a Symfony2 application to provide a SOA - Previously, the author has already published a post about refactoring an application as part of the concept of a service-oriented architecture . This time, the author took up the implementation of the ideas described using the example of a Symfony2 application, however, the described techniques can be transferred to another framework without any problems if desired.
• How to prepare a report and get to the conference - Post is not directly related to development and PHP, but due to the huge number of conferences with open CFPs, it will be of interest to many experienced developers wishing to speak at them.
• Avoid unnecessary interfaces - A small note with recommendations on the proper use of interfaces.
• Escaping (or what you need to know to work with text in the text) - Habrapirevod, which contains many examples of what the neglect of screening leads to, and some recommendations on how to screen text.
• We start testing - The post says that despite the common approach, in which modular testing is first implemented, then functional and then acceptance, you can very often skip the unit testing stage and begin functional tests - this is completely normal. The inability to write unit tests should not be an excuse for not having tests at all. Try Codeception .
• Silicone Skeleton - Silex tuned - The author of the post has prepared a good seed-application for Silex .
• Test on the topic of web application security - 15 questions that will help identify gaps in knowledge about the security of web applications. For each question, an explanation and links are given for a deeper study of the problem.
• Why you should pay attention to Continuous Integration - FTP and editing files on production - we all went through this, but this approach is completely unacceptable in any large project and the number of developers is more than one. Fortunately, there is a more efficient approach to building and deploying an application, the author writes in brief about it.
• We work with jQuery and Silex as a RestFull-provider - In the previous post, the author wrote about using the AngularJS + Silex bundle. This time, instead of AngularJS, the author demonstrates the use of ordinary jQuery.
• Introduce Twig into your legacy code - If you need to use an advanced templating engine, this post will be a good starting point. By the way, PhpStrom supports Twig .
• How do you use bcrypt to hash passwords in PHP? - Another example of an exhaustive answer to a question asked by a StackOverflow user.
• Web API development - Excellent design API, useful for all web developers regardless of the technologies used.
• Dutch PHP Conference 2013 - One of the largest PHP conferences in the world was held in Amsterdam. The link slides 31 of the report. In addition, there is a small report from one of the participants.

Link to the previous release.