Hi everyone,
Php is a community of people who share their expertise and this week we have two articles that were sent in. The first one is from our friends at Kinsta and they benchmarked 13 widely used CMSs and frameworks on PHP 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5, to know what kind of performance improvements users can expect. The other article is about reducing PHP CLI memory consumption using fork and copy-on-write. Do check them out. We also have our usual weekly fare including guides on The Facade Pattern in Laravel, How to build a Voice-to-Text App with Laravel AI SDK, and What is gRPC and How to Use It in Laravel. Finally in Podcasts we have new episodes from No Compromises on Three ways to plan an upgrade when your codebase is a patchwork, and Collecting methods, AI Boost, and Statamic 6 on Laravel News.
We have all that and more, so we do hope you enjoy this week's newsletter. If you have an article, tutorial or podcast that you would like to be featured in our newsletter, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
All the best,
Adrian
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Articles
Laravel Form Requests: Stop Cluttering Your Controllers with Validation
Validation is one of those "small" things that can slowly ruin a codebase. At first, it is just a couple of request()->validate() calls inside your controllers, but as you add more fields and endpoints, you end up with duplicated validation arrays and controllers full of conditionals.
Secure Like a Pro: 10 Advanced Techniques in Symfony
The Symfony Security component is often underestimated, treated merely as a “login gate.” In reality, it is a sophisticated authorization framework capable of handling complex state machines, hierarchical permissions and stateless authentication flow.
Understanding WordPress Execution Order (Who Runs First and Why Your Code Fails Sometimes)
This article walks through execution order in a practical way, with real hooks and examples.
How I Write Laravel Code That Future-Me Can still Read
I stopped chasing clever solutions and started optimizing for one thing: Can I understand this quickly 1 year later?
10 Laravel Performance Optimization Tips I Learned After 10+ Years in Production
After 10+ years building scalable web applications with Laravel for everything from startups to government systems, I've learned that performance optimization isn't about premature optimization—it's about knowing which battles to fight.
How To Install Laravel Packages Without Annoying the Rest of Your Team
You don’t exactly want to commit the change and then spend hours explaining to every member of your team why the project should have Laravel Debugbar, wasting time trying to get buy-in instead of working on the product. At the same time, you don’t exactly want to see that change hanging in your uncommitted list.
PHP 8.5 benchmarks: The state of PHP performance across major CMSs and frameworks
We benchmarked 13 widely used CMSs and frameworks, including WordPress, WooCommerce, Drupal, Joomla, Laravel, Symfony and CodeIgniter, on PHP 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5 under identical conditions. WordPress was also tested on PHP 7.4, since a notable share of sites still run on that version.
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Tutorials and Talks
Creating a PHP, Go, and Python Quine Relay
I have created a Quine relay involving PHP, Go, and Python, and I’m here to explain how it works. This is the code for QuineRelay.php.
How to build a Voice-to-Text App with Laravel AI SDK
In this guide, we won't just talk about it—we will build a functional Voice-to-Text application in under 10 minutes. I call mine "Dettami", but you can call yours whatever you want.
How I Stopped WooCommerce Orders for Unsupported ZIP Codes Without Buying the Pro Plugin
I faced a strange WooCommerce problem while setting up shipping by ZIP code on a WordPress ecommerce site. I was using a plugin to define shipping rates based on specific ZIP codes. Everything looked perfect. For the ZIP codes I added, the correct shipping price was showing. But for any other ZIP code, the plugin automatically applied a default shipping rate.
Builder Pattern in PHP/Laravel: Building Clean and Flexible Order Objects
In practice, orders in e-commerce systems often evolve over time, which makes them a perfect candidate for the Builder Pattern.
Speed Up Your Symfony App by 40% with HTTP/2 and HTTP/3
Modern web protocols can dramatically improve your Symfony application’s performance. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 bring features like multiplexing, server push, and reduced latency. In this article I will show you how to configure and optimize these protocols in your Symfony projects.
What is gRPC and How to Use It in Laravel
Have you ever experienced this situation: your Laravel app needs to hit 5–10 different endpoints just to display a single dashboard page? Or maybe you’ve seen monitoring logs showing your API response times skyrocketing when traffic starts climbing?
Understanding .htaccess, Apache, and Nginx: A Laravel Developer’s Guide
As Laravel developers, many of us start our journey on Apache. Everything works out of the box, .htaccess handles routing, and life is simple. Then one day comes the message: “We’re migrating the server to Nginx for better performance.”
From 800ms to 5ms: A Senior Developer’s Guide to Laravel Database Indexing
When your Laravel application is small, everything feels fast. Queries return instantly, pages load smoothly, and life is good.
The Facade Pattern in Laravel: A Comprehensive Guide
Understanding facades is crucial for any Laravel developer, as they’re deeply integrated into the framework’s architecture. |
News and Announcements
Xdebug Update: January 2026
In this update I explain what happened with Xdebug development in the last month.
PHP 8.5.3 & HP 8.4.18 Released!
The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 8.5.3& PHP 8.4.18. This is a bug fix release. All PHP 8.5 & PHP 8.4 users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.
Laravel Live Denmark Returns to Copenhagen in August 2026
20–21, 2026, in Copenhagen. The event brings together more than 300 Laravel and PHP developers for two focused days of technical talks, networking, and community connection.
Laravel 12.51.0 Adds afterSending Callbacks, Validator whenFails, and MySQL Timeout
Laravel v12.51.0 adds notification afterSending() callbacks, fluent whenFails() and whenPasses() methods on the Validator, a MySQL query builder timeout() method, and closure support in firstOrCreate and createOrFirst for lazy value evaluation.
FrankenPHP v1.11.2 Released With 30% Faster CGO, 40% Faster GC, and Security Patches
FrankenPHP has released v1.11.2, and it is a high priority upgrade. The release addresses three security vulnerabilities, including a critical path confusion issue that could allow arbitrary file execution, plus a session leak between requests in worker mode.
February 9–15, 2026 - A Week of Symfony #998
This week, development activity was very intense for the upcoming Symfony 8.1 release, which introduced new features across the framework. Meanwhile, we shared more details about the upcoming SymfonyLive Paris 2026 conference. Finally, SymfonyCasts announced a new course about Symfony Forms.
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Podcasts and Vlogs
Laravel News: Collecting methods, AI Boost, and Statamic 6
Jake and Michael discuss all the latest Laravel releases, tutorials, and happenings in the community.
The Stack Overflow: Data is the new oil, and your database is the only way to extract it
Ryan sits down with Shireesh Thota, CVP of Azure Databases at Microsoft, to discuss the evolution of databases at Microsoft; Azure’s comprehensive portfolio that includes SQL Server, CosmosDB, and Postgres.
No Compromises Podcast: Three ways to plan an upgrade when your codebase is a patchwork
In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we discuss different strategies for tackling upgrades when parts of your codebase are multiple versions behind.
Software Engineering Radio: SE Radio 707: Subhajit Paul on ERP Automation and AI
In this episode, Subhajit Paul joins SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi to discuss how enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems work in practice and where machine learning and generative AI are beginning to fit into real-world ERP environments.
Developer Tea: Why Getting Paid Stole Your Drive and How to Get Into the Flow Again (Career Growth Accelerator)
Do you remember the early days of your career? You likely spent hours coding late into the night, fueled not by a paycheck, but by the sheer joy of building. But somewhere along the way, that intrinsic fire faded, replaced by the extrinsic motivators of Jira tickets, performance reviews, and ultimately the almighty dollar.
Shoptalk Show: Lit-HTML, Implied Target for Popover, and Website Builders
Chris has opinions about being sick, implied target for popovers, should Apple provide cross platform virtual machine images for Safari testing, what tips are there for beginners to HTML and CSS, which website builder CMS's do we recommend, and a Chipotle hack for your lunch plans.
WP Builds: 456 – WordPress vulnerabilities and the power of AI-powered malware detection
In this WP Builds episode, Nathan Wrigley talks with Thomas Raef about WordPress website security. Thomas shares his journey founding We Watch Your Website, discusses the prevalence of attacks on US WordPress sites, and explores how hackers increasingly use stolen credentials and AI-powered methods.
PHP Architect: The PHP Podcast 2026.02.12
This week on the PHP Podcast, Eric and John talk about the new PHPC.tv, PHPTek talk, AIs talking to AIs, PHPUnit Office hours, AI Upset its PR wasn’t accepted, and more.
Mostly Technical: 120: The Counselors
Ian and Aaron discuss Aaron's new AI tool Counselors, something called "Hell Week", what's new with Solo and Outro, and so much more.
Syntax: WebMCP: New Standard to Expose Your Apps to AI
Scott and Wes unpack WebMCP, a new standard that lets AI interact with websites through structured tools instead of slow, bot-style clicking.
The Changelog: All the Claw things
Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI, ZeroClaw is “claw done right”, MimiClaw runs on a $5 chip, Steve Yegge on managing the AI Vampire, and the day the telnet died.
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Slashing PHP CLI Memory Consumption: Techniques for High-Performance Apps
PHP CLI workers helped us scale, until memory became the bottleneck. Here’s how we fixed it with fork and copy-on-write.
Platform engineering internals: building an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) for your backend teams
Eight months ago, our backend team of 10 engineers was drowning in tickets: “I need a staging environment.” “Can someone give me access to production logs?” “How do I deploy my feature branch? Every request meant a Jira ticket, a wait for the platform team, and another context switch for everyone involved.
A Comparative Analysis of State-Based Unit Testing: The Superiority of Real Aggregates over State Dubblers
in DDD Architecture
In the era of advanced design patterns such as Domain-Driven Design (DDD), the unit testing paradigm is evolving from mere methodological isolation toward the verification of behavioral domain consistency.
You’re Probably Building Laravel Apps the Hard Way (And Don’t Even Know It)
Let me say this upfront: if you’re building Laravel apps the way most tutorials teach you, you’re probably making your life 10 times harder than it needs to be. And you’re not alone.
Hyperf vs Laravel: The Ultimate Performance Showdown
Laravel has dominated the PHP framework landscape for years, but a new challenger has emerged: Hyperf. Built on Swoole, Hyperf promises blazing-fast performance through coroutines and persistent memory. But how does it really compare to Laravel in real-world scenarios?
JSON in PHP: Everything You Need to Know for Modern Web Development
It’s 10:00 PM on a Friday. You’ve just finished a feature that sends data from your PHP backend to a sleek React frontend. Locally, everything works. You deploy. Suddenly, the frontend starts throwing TypeError: data.map is not a function. You check the API response, and instead of the expected list of users, your PHP script has returned an empty object {} instead of an empty array [].
Zero-Config OpenAPI for Laravel: A Different Approach to API Documentation
This article looks at a different approach — one that combines AST parsing, PHP reflection, runtime capture, and a plugin system to generate OpenAPI 3.1.0 specs from your existing Laravel code, without annotations.
Laravel Closures in the Real World: Why They’re More Than “Anonymous Functions”
This article shows how closures help you write cleaner, safer production code using a real retry pattern I use in a Laravel service.
Insecure Design: Response header poisoning leading to account takeover
I’ll be showing how some similar vulnerability as discussed in the post, “How little things matter: Broken Access Control leading to user promoting to Admin” can be exploited in another way.
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Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
cakephp/chronos
A simple API extension for DateTime.
codeception/module-phpbrowser
Codeception module for testing web application over HTTP.
php-parallel-lint/php-console-color
Simple library for creating colored console ouput.
bugsnag/bugsnag-psr-logger
Official Bugsnag PHP PSR Logger.
intervention/image-laravel
Laravel Integration of Intervention Image.
scheb/2fa-bundle
A generic interface to implement two-factor authentication in Symfony applications.
spatie/laravel-signal-aware-command
Handle signals in artisan commands.
ircmaxell/random-lib
A Library For Generating Secure Random Numbers.
zenstruck/foundry
A model factory library for creating expressive, auto-completable, on-demand dev/test fixtures with Symfony and Doctrine.
knplabs/gaufrette
PHP library that provides a filesystem abstraction layer.
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Jobs
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