The SitePoint PHP blog has posted a new tutorial for those developers out there that like the idea of the Laravel Mix functionality for defining Webpack builds but aren't using the rest of the framework for their application.

If you, like me, just want to get up and running on a project as quickly as possible, you probably don’t want to spend time configuring build tools like Webpack. Laravel Mix solves this problem, and makes asset compiling incredibly easy, but what if you want to use it on a non-Laravel project? This article shows you how to accomplish that.

[...] Laravel Mix, formerly Elixir, could be defined as an API wrapper for Webpack. It has a fluent syntax and is generally easy to use. Setting up versioning, hot reloading, and asset building/compiling is a breeze and requires only a single configuration file and a few lines of code.

The post starts off with the requirements you'll need to create the build - besides the Mix code, naturally (NPM and Node). He includes the commands to get the required packages installed and how to create the initial Webpack "mix" file. They then add a few packages to be installed, create assets to be compiled and run the tool to perform the actual build. There's also a section about "cache busting" and, finally, setting up a local index file to test out the result. The tutorial ends with a few other helpful commands you might want to use during your development.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted their latest interview with a member of the PHP community. In this latest show host Cal Evans talks with Larry Masters

In this episode Cal and Larry talk about Cake PHP and some of the backstory on how it was started and where it is now. They also talk about some of the features of the framework (including built-in internationalization support). Larry also talks about the interchangeable pieces of the framework and how the Cake PHP Development Corporation fits into the overall picture. He also shares about some of the training resources the group provides and the conference they host.

You can listen to this latest show either using the in-page audio player or you can download the mp3 for listening at your leisure. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter to get updates when new shows are released.

In a new tutorial posted to the Laravel News site Eric Barnes shows you how to easily create JSON feed output from the data in a Laravel application. JSON feed is a new standard that's been defined to try to bring more structure to JSON responses for feeds, following in the tradition of RSS feed structure.

JSON Feed is a new standard to formalize a JSON based RSS feed that aims to simplify creating feeds by doing away with the XML standard. Implementing a feed for your site is simple, and the spec is surprisingly clear.

[...] I just implemented this feed format for Laravel News, and you can find the results here. As a quick example let’s go through setting up a feed like this.

He then walks you through the code required to create the feed, sharing a listing of posts (the latest 20) from the Laravel News site. He then defines the main feed data, adds in each of the posts to the "items" set and returns the resulting array for translation into JSON output.

In a new post to his site Paul Jones shares a conversation he had about handling domain exceptions in controllers and if it was a good practice or not.

A few months ago I had a great email conversation with a correspondent about how to handle business logic exceptions in his controller code. [...] If you find yourself in this situation, the first question to ask yourself is, “Why am I handling domain exceptions in my user interface code?” (Remember: Model-View-Controller and Action-Domain-Responder are user interface patterns; in this case, the user interface is composed of an HTTP request and response.) Domain exceptions should be handled by the domain logic in a domain-appropriate fashion.

He shares the original email (shortened) where they asked their question and outlined their current situation and setup. He points out that the point the other person made about not feeling right to thrown domain exceptions and having the controller handle them is a good path to follow but to take it even further. He suggests modifying the response to the domain logic to be a "domain payload" instead of an exception and then have the controller use that (getting its status) to determine how to proceed. This can prevent the need to catch random exceptions and provides more consistency to the overall flow.

Recent posts from the PHP Quickfix site:

• exakat 0.11.4 review - Exakat
  #exakat, #version, #review, #updates

• A package to enable short class names in an Artisan tinker session - murze.be
  #laravel, #package, #short, #class, #name
• How to Setup Google AMP in WordPress - Developer Drive
  #google, #amp, #wordpress, #tutorial
• New in Symfony 3.3: PSR-4 based Service Discovery (Symfony Blog)
  #symfony, #discovery, #service, #psr4
• Using the New PDF Preview Images in WordPress 4.7 in the Real World
  #wordpress, #pdf, #preview, #tutorial
• Preview email with DebugKit in CakePHP 3
  #debugkit, #cakephp3, #tutorial, #preview
• exakat 0.11.3 review - Exakat
  #exacat, #review, #release, #v0.11.3
• What Version of Laravel do I have Installed? - dotdev
  #installed, #laravel, #version, #check

In the most recent episode of the North Meets South podcast - Episode #28 - hosts Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda talk about Laravel. More specifically they cover Eloquent functionality, client expectations, and packages.

In this episode, Jake and Michael talk about Eloquent observers and answer listener questions about managing client expectations and packages we use in our Laravel applications.

Other topics mentioned in this episode include Dash (the documentation tool), the "Supercharge Your Tinker Workflow" article and the Sentry package for Laravel. You can listen to this latest show either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly for listening offline. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter to get the latest updates when new shows are released.

On the Symfony blog, there's an article posted by Ryan Weaver helping to explain the new service configuration changes that are included with version 3.3 of the framework.

In less than 2 weeks, Symfony 3.3 will be released. It comes with a lot of new stuff, but there is one feature that stands out: the new service configuration. I am very excited about these changes: they're designed to accelerate development, make Symfony easier to learn and encourage best-practices (e.g. injecting specific dependencies instead of using $container->get())... without sacrificing predictability and stability.

The post includes an example of what the new configuration file format will look like and briefly explains some of the changes. For those interested in a more in-depth look, they also link to this page in the Symfony documentation that goes through the changes step by step. It covers the autowiring by default, autoload of services, controllers being registered as services and more. If you're planning on making the move up to v3.3 when it's released (or sometime after) definitely check out this guide to make the transition easier.

On the Stitcher.io blog there's a post that's advocating the addition of a feature to the core PHP language that several others have: generics. The basic idea behind generics is to provide functionality that allows the definition of entity types that can be reused as a default (like a "collection" generic that could be used instead of a base collection class).

In today's blog post we'll explore some common problems with arrays in PHP. All the problems and issues listed could be solved with a pending RFC which adds generics to PHP. We won't explore in too much detail what generics are. But at the end of this read, you should have a good idea as to why they are useful, and why we really want them in PHP. So without further ado, let's dive into the subject.

They start off with a common use case in PHP: a collection of blog posts and getting information from them. There's no guarantee that the contents of the set are always post objects leading to specific checks to ensure data quality before use. The post then uses a common example from PHP, the creation of a collection class to handle a set of objects and then showing how (with pseudo-code as generics aren't in the language) how that same functionality might look defined as a generic collection instead.

Latest PECL Releases:

• pdo_sqlsrv 4.2.0preview
  [Added]
  • Added support for sql_variant data type with limitation ([issue #51] and [issue #127])
  • This is a preview for Debian Jessie (tested on Debian 8.7) [Fixed]
  • Increased Test Coverage
  • General bug fixes after running static analyses [Limitation]
  • Limited support for input / output params when using sql_variant [Known Issues]
  • User defined data types
  • When pooling is enabled in Linux or MAC
    • unixODBC 2.3.4 or prior (Linux and MAC) might not return proper diagnostics information, such as error messages, warnings and informative messages
    • due to this unixODBC bug, fetch large data (such as xml, binary) as streams as a workaround. See the examples (https://github.com/Microsoft/msphpsql/wiki/Connection-Pooling-on-Linux-and-Mac)
• sqlsrv 4.2.0preview
  [Added] - Added support for sql_variant data type with limitation ([issue #51] and [issue #127]) - This is a preview for Debian Jessie (tested on Debian 8.7) [Fixed] - Increased Test Coverage - General bug fixes after running static analyses [Limitation] - Limited support for input / output params when using sql_variant [Known Issues] - User defined data types - When pooling is enabled in Linux or MAC - unixODBC 2.3.4 or prior (Linux and MAC) might not return proper diagnostics information, such as error messages, warnings and informative messages - due to this unixODBC bug, fetch large data (such as xml, binary) as streams as a workaround. See the examples (https://github.com/Microsoft/msphpsql/wiki/Connection-Pooling-on-Linux-and-Mac)

The TutsPlus.com site has continued their "Building Your Startup" tutorial series with a new post about APIs and security. In this series, they've been using the Yii2 framework to create a calendaring "startup" site. Now they're to the point of adding a "RESTful" API to the system and want to be sure it's secure.

Recently, I introduced you to Yii's simple REST API generation and Meeting Planner's new "RESTful" service API. At that time, I mentioned that these APIs were only loosely secured. Sure, there was a shared secret between the client and the server, but there were a couple of problems.

First, the secret key and user tokens were repeatedly transmitted in query parameters of SSL calls. And there was no other authenticity check for the data, allowing a middle-person attack. In today's episode, I'll guide you through how I secured the API against these weaknesses for a more robust API.

They start off looking at the API security that was previously put in place using an "app ID" and "app secret" values to identify the user. To improve on this, the system is updated to use the "app secret" value to sign the outgoing data via a HMAC hash that is sent along with the request.