The digest of interesting news and materials from the world of PHP over the last two weeks, No. 24 (August 11, 2013 - August 25, 2013)

We offer to your attention another selection with links to news and materials.

Enjoy reading!

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News and Releases

• PHP updates 5.4.18 and 5.5.2 , as well as 5.4.19 and 5.5.3 - Releases include a number of fixes, including security bugs. All users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest versions. Full list of changes here .
  The PHP 5.5.2 release also includes the implementation of the secure session mechanism .
• Yii 1.1.14 released - Large-scale update of the branch 1.1, which includes more than 80 fixes and more than 60 improvements. A detailed review of the new features is available in the release candidate announcement. .
• The League of Extraordinary Packages - New organization in the community of PHP-developers, which aims to highlight the PHP-packages of the highest quality. Participants comply with the standards of PHP-FIG, follow best practices and use the most modern solutions.
• JSON support is removed in PHP 5.5 - The original post made a lot of noise, as some users, having read only the post title and without getting into the essence of the issue, rushed to sow panic in all social platforms. In fact, of course, JSON support remained in place, unless the implementation changed. Follow the link for a detailed comment on this topic.
• The draft of the standard PSR-4 - The post in Reddit briefly describes the essence of the new standard, which has passed into the status of a draft and is likely to be adopted soon. Just like the PSR-0, the new standard concerns autoloading.
• PHP wins with a score of 96.5% - Statistics of distribution of server-side programming languages ​​among sites using the Russian language.
• Zend products are free for open-source PHP projects - a Zend campaign, during which Zend Server Enterprise Edition and Zend Studio are provided free of charge to contributors of popular PHP projects.

Php

• PHP from the future - A small but interesting post, in which the author attempts to predict the future fate of the language and ecosystem.
• RFC: Constant Scalar Expressions - This proposal assumes that scalar expressions can be used where only static values ​​can now be used: constant declarations, property declarations, arguments of default functions. For example, so const FOO = 1 + 1; or so static $bar = 1 << 2; or so function foo($a = 1 | 2) {} .
• Generators in action - Details about the new features from PHP 5.5. Examples are attached.

Instruments

• PHP DebugBar - Universal debugging panel for PHP. Similar tools are in Symfony, Zend Framework, Yii and other frameworks, but now there is an independent solution! The panel displays information about the script execution time, memory used, query parameters, exceptions, profiling of database requests, and more. Look at the panel in action right on the main page of the project.
• Building complex regular expressions with VerbalExpressions - VerbalExpressions is a PHP library that allows you to describe regular expressions using natural language constructs. For example, the URL description looks like this: $regex->startOfLine()->then("http")->maybe("s")->then("://")->maybe("www.") ->anythingBut(" ")->endOfLine();
• Convert HTML to PDF with Dompdf - Habrapile translation tutorial on the use of the library Dompdf .
• Modules for ZF2 are plentiful! - The author has implemented and described a number of useful modules for Zend Framework 2.
• 10 great tools for PHP developers - Some tools from the list will probably be familiar to you, such as Phalcon or Pinba, but maybe something from the list will be new, like Munee .
• Tools for testing REST API - Although not directly related to PHP, nevertheless, a very relevant question has surfaced on Reddit: what are the tools for debugging / testing the REST API? Among the proposed options were the following: Postman , SoapUI , Advanced REST Client for Chrome , Dev HTTP Client , hurl.it , Frisby , Runscope , built-in REST client from PHPStorm . Guzzle , Codeception with a REST module have also been proposed. In addition, I recommend to pay attention to Swagger-UI ( demo ) and in general to the Swagger project and Swagger-PHP in particular.
• Debugging pane for Yii 1.1 ported from Yii 2 - A native debug panel appeared in Yii2, which the author successfully transferred to Yii 1.1. I also recall that for Yii 1.1 there is an alternative debugging panel .

Study materials

• Interception of execution of system functions in PHP - In the latest version of the Go! AOP has been added to intercept system functions. Under the link post with a demonstration of the use of this feature.
• We add the ability to pay with Bitcoin on your website - In the tutorial there is a little bit about what bitcoin is and how it works, as well as an example of the application on the Slim microfragm using the BIPS processor.
• Using Facebook Realtime Updates - Realtime Updates allows your application to subscribe to the information of interest to the user and receive notifications when an update occurs, rather than making periodic requests on their own. This feature is discussed in the tutorial. The example is implemented using SlimBootstrap .
• Using PHP's Embedded Web Server in Behat Tests - Some time ago, the author already wrote about how to use the web server built in PHP (≥ 5.4) in PHPUnit tests . This time, a quick note on how to use the web server in acceptance tests on Behat.
• Create a BDD framework for PHP - The author wanted to find a Jasmine equivalent only for PHP, but did not find it and decided to implement something similar on its own. In the post a small demonstration of the idea.
• Switching from TDD to BDD using Behat and Symfony2 - In one of his projects on Symfony 2, the author decided to try out the concept of BDD using Behat , Mink and PHPSpec , and in a post describes the experience.
• Yii, continuous integration - how not to break everything - In the post, the author shares the experience of establishing a process of continuous integration and quality control of code in a large project.
• Manage Amazon EC2 instances with PHP - The author demonstrates how using the AWS SDK you can create EC2 instances directly from PHP in just a few lines of code.
• Data Structures, PHP - A good series of articles on data structures for PHP developers . Translated parts about the stack, queue and trees. We are waiting for the continuation of the heap and graphs.
• Progress in PHP-FIG - The PHP-FIG group already exists for 4 years and during this time 4 standards have been published. However, since January, no new standards have been adopted, and the group was left by Matthew Weier O'Phinney, the architect and leader of the Zend Framework project. In a post about what is happening "behind the scenes" and about the plans of the group.
• Authenticating API Queries with Query Auth - A post with many examples of using the QueryAuth library for authenticating API queries.
• “D” does not mean Dependency Injection - The author writes about a very popular fallacy. In the SOLID concept, contrary to popular belief, “D” means not Dependency Injection, but Dependency Inversion, which, of course, is a broader concept.
• HipHop VM: Battlefield Exploration for Debian 7 + Nginx + Symfony2 - Instructions for installing and configuring HHVM. Although it was not possible to start symfony, some tests of virtual machine performance are attached.
• HHVM: testing performance and compatibility with Joomla, Bitrix and Wordpress - Continuing the theme are still HHVM performance tests.
• It doesn't matter which PHP framework to choose - The first thing many developers pay attention to when choosing a framework is speed. However, the author believes that this is not the main criterion and explains why.
• "Related News" with PHP, phpmorphy and MySQL - A small habrapost, in which an embodiment of sampling similar records is described.
• Laravel Weekly - Laravel's official blog publishes a weekly collection of interesting materials. Some of them fall into the digests, but if you are interested in the framework, I recommend also to follow the releases of Laravel Weekly.
• How to start using DI - A simple demonstration of the concept of DI.
• Getting ready for a technical report - Useful tips and tricks from a PHP developer from a core team and an experienced speaker, Anthony Ferrara.
• PhpBB integration in the Yii framework - Actually, step by step instructions on how to quickly integrate the phpBB forum into your website, written on the Yii framework.
• Push Notifications with Prowl - Prowl is a Growl client for iOS. Use case: you need to quickly implement the sending of any notifications to yourself or a group of users without the hassle of creating and publishing your own application.
• Laravel 4: Authentication - A large and detailed Laravel 4 tutorial on the example of implementing user authentication.
• Encoding and decoding PHP code - An interesting article about obfuscation and, accordingly, deobfuscation of PHP code.
• Deobfuscation of one malicious code - And in this post is a specific example of the analysis obfuscated script.
• Protecting login forms from brute force attacks using queues - The author describes an interesting way to protect against brute force attacks. Using the queue, it limits the number of possible attempts per second.
• Static analysis of PHP code in Sublime Text - The author describes how to configure static code analysis tools in the Sublime Text editor.
• Zephir in Action - Screencast demonstrating the work of the alpha version of the Zephir language, developed by the Phalcon team.

Materials from past conferences

• Introduction to Silex - Video recording of an excellent report from Igor Wiedler.
• Reacting with ReactPHP - Slides talk about ReactPHP and Ratchet by React.
• Northeast PHP 2013 - Slides 25 reports from a large-scale conference fully dedicated to PHP and recently held in Boston.

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