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Stitcher.io:
New in PHP 7.4
Jan 11, 2019 @ 15:33:57

On the Sticher.io blog Brendt has written up a guide looking forward to PHP's next major release and what's planned to be included in PHP 7.4.

PHP 7.4 will probably be released somewhere December 2019. tagged: language php74 features lookahead rfc planned

Link: https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-74

php[architect]:
PHP 7.3 is On Track
Sep 17, 2018 @ 16:19:58

On the php[architect] site they've shared another article from their September 2018 issue. In this new article author Damien Seguy looks forward to PHP 7.3 and covers some of the new features that come with it.

PHP 7.3 successfully passed the “feature freeze” deadline. On Aug. 1st, 2018 all features for PHP 7.3 were identified. This triggered the first PHP 7.3 beta, on the following day, and, from there, we’ll reach RC in September. It is time to review what this new PHP version has available for us, help test PHP 7.3, and get ready.

He goes through several of the changes coming including:

  • Improved Garbage Collector
  • Relaxed Heredoc/Nowdoc
  • Trailing Comma for Calls
  • Deprecated Case-insensitive Constants
  • PCRE 2.0
  • SQLite 3.24
  • Json_encode May Throw Exceptions
  • array_first_key(), array_last_key()
  • list() with References
  • is_countable()
  • net_get_interfaces()
  • Removing image2wbmp()
  • assert() is Now a Reserved Function
  • Continue for Loops, Break for Switch
  • Monotonic Timer: hrtime()
  • compact() Reports Undefined Variables

For each of the items listed, there's a brief explanation of what the feature is and some code to show it in action. The tutorial ends with a listing of some things you can do to prepare your current codebase to work with PHP 7.3 ahead of the December 13th release date.

tagged: language release php73 lookahead preparation features tutorial example

Link: https://www.phparch.com/2018/09/php-7-3-is-on-track/

Matt Stauffer:
Introducing Laravel Nova: A Tool for Building Admin Panels and Custom CMSes
Jul 27, 2018 @ 15:16:01

Matt Stauffer has a new post to his site that takes a "deep dive" into Laravel Nova, the recently announced administration panel that's developed by the Laravel project. This is the first post in a new series.

These are my notes that I took during the announcement on 2018-07-25. I hope to go back later and update this after a more careful re-watching of the YouTube recording that's now up, so I could get some of my code samples more exact and catch anything I missed.

If you notice anything I missed or got wrong, please let me know on Twitter! And please check back in a few days so I have time to fix this up. :)

The post reads more like a live stream than a formal write up, but the good stuff is all there:

  • the basics of what Nova provides
  • how it works
  • defining a resource
  • working with fields
  • actions/filters
  • lenses
  • searching
  • auditing

...and much more. The post goes through each item, providing screenshots, context and code to show off the feature. If you want to see the announcement for yourself, check out the video over on YouTube.

tagged: laravel nova administration dashboard indepth features code

Link: https://mattstauffer.com/blog/introducing-laravel-nova-a-tool-for-building-admin-panels-and-custom-cmses/

Zend Framework Blog:
Expressive 3!
Mar 19, 2018 @ 17:14:54

The Zend Framework blog has posted their official announcement of the release of Expressive version 3, the latest major release for the Zend Framework-based microframework based around PSR-15 middleware.

Expressive 3 embraces modern PHP, and requires PHP 7.1 or higher. Strong type-hinting, including return type hints, make both our job and your job easier and more predictable. The ability to use all modern PHP features helps us deliver a solid base for your application.

Expressive 3 provides full support for the PSR-15 (Middleware and Request Handlers) standard. [...] Expressive 3 massively refactors its internals as well. [...] Expressive 3 provides more command line tooling and tooling improvements in order to make developing your application easier.

[...] Finally, we recognize that Expressive has changed massively between versions 1 and 3, while simultaneously keeping its primary API stable and unchanged. However, to help users find the information they need for the version they run, we have rolled out versioned documentation, with each version providing only information specific to its release cycle.

The post also lists out some of the new components including zend-expressive-session, zend-expressive-csrf and zend-expressive-hal. There's also links to more information about upgrading, community resources and a "thank you" section to several people that helped get the project to this version 3 release.

tagged: zendframework zendexpressive release v3 major features upgrade thanks

Link: https://framework.zend.com/blog/2018-03-16-expressive-3.html

thePHP.cc:
Why PHP 7.2 Is Important
Feb 06, 2018 @ 15:33:41

On thePHP.cc site there's a post that talks about an upcoming PHP release, PHP 7.2, and why it's important despite it not having any amazing new features or too much in the way of major changes. There are a few things they mention, however, that make it seem a lot less boring.

A while ago, Sebastian said in a presentation that "PHP 7.2 will be a boring release". What he meant by that is that PHP 7.2 does not have an awful lot of fancy new features. Okay, adding the sodium extension to PHP's standard distribution is great, but the majority of PHP developers do not have to deal with cryptography in PHP on a daily basis.

[...] We are not so sure anymore that PHP 7.2 really is a boring release. As with every release in the 7 series, PHP keeps getting faster and faster. [...] The PHP core developers, again, did a great job cleaning up some more sins of the past. [...] Along with the cleanups that were already done, quite a few things have been deprecated in PHP 7.2, which schedules them for removal in PHP 8.

They talk about some of the changes coming with PHP 7.2 including the addition of libsodium support, smaller changes to variable handling and what's being done to prepare the language for the next major version, PHP 8. They also remind their readers that no version of PHP 5 - even 5.6 - is supported any longer (just security fixes now) and all current users of the language should upgrade to PHP 7.0+ immediately.

tagged: php72 importance version upgrade features

Link: https://thephp.cc/news/2018/02/why-php-72-is-important

D. Nagy Gergo:
Neat Laravel Features from 2017
Jan 09, 2018 @ 16:20:01

On his Medium.com site D. Nagy Gergo shares some "neat Laravel features" he's come across in his time developing with the framework.

We passed a year again, (oh, Happy New Year, before we forget), so we decided to collect some features from the Laravel framework that added in the previous year.

There were two big version changes, 5.4 in January and 5.5 in August. Of course, the big releases brought huge changes, but we try to focus on those that added during the year, without any bigger announcement.

In his list he includes functionality like:

  • the "tap" and "when" methods for collection handling
  • API route handling
  • new Blade directives around Guards
  • using "artisan" to build out correct model factories
  • the "firstWhere" method to find and return the first match in a model

Each of the items in the list include a brief summary of the feature and a link to more information about it in the manual.

tagged: laravel features 2017 list description manual

Link: https://medium.com/pine-code/neat-features-in-laravel-from-2017-736096bdf5d2

Romans Malinovskis:
Objectively comparing ORM / DAL libraries
Dec 21, 2017 @ 18:19:38

In a new post on his Medium.com site Romans Malinovskis has posted an objective comparison of ORM/DBAL libraries based on his own list. It includes several different libraries from all around the community including Doctrine, Eloquent, Cake ORM and Agile Data.

For many of us, developers, pattern of accessing external data (SQL) is a thing of preference. We get used to different syntaxes and subjectively endorse it. By looking past the individual preferences, I wanted to create a “comparison criteria” that would help PHP community to objectively evaluate data persistence frameworks based on features. As I looked around I haven’t found anything, so I started to work on my own list:

https://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/php-data-access-libraries-orm-activerecord-persistence. I welcome my readers to help me populate and use the table. In this article I explain various features which I’ve used as comparison criteria.

The (lengthy) post is divided up into sections for each of the criteria including:

  • Sections and Scope
  • Support of Persistence Engines
  • Criteria, Scope, Condition
  • Query Building
  • Single-record operations
  • Relations and References

...just to name a few. Each section comes with an explanation of what it is in a library-agnostic way and code examples where relevant. Be sure to check out both the table and the rest of the post for the full details.

tagged: compare orm dbal library chart criteria summary features

Link: https://medium.com/@romaninsh/objectively-comparing-orm-dal-libraries-e4f095de80b5

Matt Stauffer:
New Laravel 5.5 Features: Recap from Laracon US 2017
Jul 27, 2017 @ 15:45:54

Matt Stauffer has a new post to his site sharing some of the new features and updates to Laravel that were announced at Laracon US 2017. This is the second post in his series covering what's new in Laravel 5.5.

He was updating the post as the items were announced (live-blogging) and now the post has the complete list:

  • Frontend presets
  • New routing options
  • Blade::if
  • Renderable mailable
  • Renderable Exceptions
  • Responsable interface
  • One-off Notifications
  • Validation improvements
  • TrustedProxy package brought internally
  • Migrate:fresh
  • New database migration trait
  • WithoutExceptionHandling middleware
  • Dusk improvements
  • Package auto-discovery
  • Vendor:publish menu
  • Auto-registered console commands
  • Job chaining
  • Better missing model handling in jobs

As you can see the list is quite long and filled with both updates to current functionality and with new features. Check out the full post for information on each - some come with descriptions and other with commands/code to show them in action.

tagged: laravel v55 features laraconus17 conference liveblog updates

Link: https://mattstauffer.co/blog/new-laravel-5-5-features-recap-from-laracon-us-2017

thePHP.cc:
Migrating to PHPUnit 6
Feb 03, 2017 @ 15:07:28

On thePHP.cc site there's a new post sharing what you need to know about migrating your PHPUnit installation up to PHPUnit 6 from previous versions.

The first version of PHPUnit 6 was released today. Today also marks the End of Life of PHPUnit 4. What does this mean for you? The answer to this question depends on which versions of PHP and PHPUnit you currently use.

They break the reminder of the article down into three sections:

  • what you'll need to change to update from PHPUnit 4
  • what you'll need to change to update from PHPUnit 5
  • what kinds of things come with PHPUnit 6 that "you'll want to use"

This last section includes updates like the changes to namespacing, having "risky" test checking enabled by default, deprecated APIs and the ability to export a log file JUnit will understand.

tagged: migrate phpunit6 tutorial phpunit4 phpunit5 features updates

Link: https://thephp.cc/news/2017/02/migrating-to-phpunit-6

Arpatech.com:
9 Things You Should Need to Know About PHP 7
Jan 27, 2017 @ 17:20:50

The Arpatech.com blog has a new post sharing their list of top nine things to know about PHP 7 with some brief explanations for each. It's not an in-depth coverage of the features in this latest major release of the language but it does give a nice overview for those not familiar with what really changed.

If you are a web developer or a website owner, and you love to use CMS that are PHP-enabled like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or PHP timetable, PHP 7 which was released on 3 December 2015, is now ready for the production use.

Yes you heard it right! PHP 7 is out to use. We are going to tell all the great things you need to know about PHP 7.

They've included several types of topics in their list, both code and performance related:

  • PHPNG, the New Core
  • Double the Speed
  • New Spaceship (<=>) and Null Coalescing (??) Operators
  • Enables Accurate Type Declarations
  • Imports from the Same Namespace

Each item on the list comes with a brief summary of what the improvement offers and, in the case of code-related items, a quick snippet showing it in action.

tagged: php7 top9 list major release features improvements summary

Link: http://www.arpatech.com/blog/9-best-things-you-should-know-about-php7/


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