PHP 7 Exceptions, Generators, and Expectations

PHP 7 is scheduled for release in mid-November. Along with a big performance improvement, PHP 7 offers several new features and changes to make PHP programs easier to write and maintain. Last month’s Leveling Up, What’s Coming in PHP 7 looked at some of the backwards-incompatible changes plus some new features such as scalar-type declarations and return types. This article will focus on some of the new features that may not have not been as widely publicized but will have a major impact on how PHP 7 programs are written. by Aaron Piotrowski

Crystal Clear PHP Code

Put simply, clearPHP is a coding reference for all of us. It tracks recommendations to write clear code, avoiding the classic traps, keeping options open for the future, and preventing decayed code. The recommendations go beyond coding conventions, which focus on code writing, and code architecture, with its design patterns and conceptions. This is the first time where an effort has been made to collect all those rules, so every project can choose among them, and define exactly its own coding standard. by Damien Seguy

Two Years of PHPAmersfoort: Running a Local Usergroup

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Two years ago as of this writing, we organized the first meeting of PHPAmersfoort, the local PHP usergroup for the city of Amersfoort in The Netherlands. It has been a very interesting time filled with lessons on how to run a local usergroup and discovering what works and what doesn’t, with a great number of speakers presenting and many intriguing discussions. In this article, I want to share with you some of the things we’ve learned along the way and give you some tips and tricks for running your own local usergroup. by Stefan Koopmanschap

Manageable Microservices with RabbitMQ

Using microservices to achieve a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is gaining popularity as a way to reduce cognitive load when understanding systems. In this introductory tutorial, I will present the fundamental concepts of the free and open-source message broker, RabbitMQ, and how you can apply it in the real world to build redundant and scalable microservices. by James Titcumb

Education Station: DOM Traversal in PHP—It’s Just as Simple as jQuery

Recently, in my regular readings and conversations with other developers as part of researching this column, I came across Symfony’s DOMCrawler component. The package’s documentation, says that it “eases DOM navigation for HTML and XML documents.” In this month’s edition of Education Station, I’m going to give you an overview of the library by walking you through the small web scraper I wrote. by Matthew Setter

Leveling Up: New Features in PHP 7, part 2

It’s getting even closer now. As of this writing, PHP 7 RC 5 is now out. By the time you read this, PHP 7 RC 6 will have been released. PHP 7 may figuratively be just around the corner. Last month, we covered a number of new and exciting features coming in PHP 7. There are a few more that I wanted to cover this month, and I also wanted to dive a bit deeper into a couple that we talked about last month. by David Stockton

Community Corner: Nate Abele on Baking Cake, Lithium, and Radify

This month, we interview Nate Abele about open-source projects he’s worked on, the direction of PHP, and his company Radify. Included is our usual roundup of notable community events. by Joe Devon

Security Corner: Risky Business

Welcome to the first edition of a new column in the magazine devoted to helping you, the developer, write more secure code. In the future, I’ll be getting into more technical matters, but to start things off the right way, I want to talk about something that’s easily forgotten by the development side of the house: risk. by Chris Cornutt

finally{}: On the Zend Acquisition

By the time this magazine is in your hands, the news that Zend Technologies has been acquired by RogueWave Software should be fairly well known. Unsurprisingly, many are asking how this will affect the open-source PHP project. by Eli White