Uncanny PHP – May 2017

Even before superhero movies were an annual summer staple, comic book heroes have been a part of my life. Because super hero’s backgrounds and powers are often reimagined and updated, they’ve kept their appeal and place in our popular culture. PHP’s continual popularity, which you’ve read about in these pages many times, is due to a similar impetus to evolve. PHP 7 brought static and return type hints a while the later 5.x releases made it easier to use functional programming techniques. In its early days, PHP’s popularity was boosted by how easy it was to extend and bring in new capabilities to your web applications. As the language we use evolves, make sure you’re staying relevant by expanding what’s in your utility belt.

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Visualization of Workflows in an Event Sourced Application

Domain-driven design, Command Query Responsibility Segregation, and Event Sourcing are valuable strategies for modeling complex and chaotic domains, especially when interpretation of the domain may be evolving while the rules of it are well-known. In this article, we will investigate how CQRS/ES can be applied to visualize Workflow Management using PHP, Vue.js, and JointJS. by Dustin Wheeler

Look at the Vue From Here

Vue, more formally known as Vue.js, is touted as The Progressive JavaScript Framework. Like other JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery, its goal is to make coding in the browser easier for developers by abstracting away all of the differences in browsers. by John Congdon

Cryptography Best Practices in PHP

How to use cryptography in PHP without getting hurt. Security is a very important aspect of software development, particularly in a web application where every user can potentially be malicious. If you need to manage critical or sensitive data like passwords, API secret keys, credit card numbers, etc. you need to use cryptography. But cryptography is very, very hard! by Enrico Zimuel

PHP Prepared Statements and MySQL Table Design

When using a PHP framework, standard practice is to use an object-relational mapping (ORM) for database access. However, with high-volume logging and statistics-gathering, it pays to go “old school” with PHP prepared statements.Meanwhile, when MySQL tables quickly grow by millions of rows, table storage space becomes an issue. Our table design must focus on keeping these tables more compact and efficient. Here too, prepared statements simplify both coding and table design. by Edward Barnard

Education Station: Qafoo Quality Analyzer

Code. Is it science or an art? While it is a science, it is often treated as an art. If you want to know how good your (or your team’s) code is, then these terms don’t cut it. You have to know how good it is, quantitatively. And to do that, you have to analyze it. In this month’s edition of Education Station, I’m going to step you through an excellent library that can do help you do this: the Qafoo Quality Analyzer. by Matthew Setter

Leveling Up: Code Review

It is said that to become a better writer, one should read a lot. In a related way, one of the best ways to get better at writing code is to read a lot of code. Not only is it a great way for you to level up your skills, but you can help improve your team and your code as well. by David Stockton

Community Corner: Become a Better Listener with Emily Stamey

This month I’m taking a break from yelling “GET OFF MY LAWN” so that someone who actually has something interesting can speak to you. This month my friend Emily Stamey is going to take over and talk about paying attention to each other. Do me a favor and pay more attention to her than you kids ever do to me. by Cal Evans

Security Corner: An OWASP Update—The Top 10 for 2017

The world of the web is changing at such a rapid pace these days it’s almost impossible to keep up. There’s always some hot new language to learn or some game-changing tool you just have to implement right now. It’s hard to figure out the good content and information from the deluge that bombards us every day as technology professionals. The security world is just a slice of this big picture, and even in that small of a section, there’s still a going on. Not only are new techniques and tools being created and used every day, but attackers are finding new and even more clever ways to work around our defenses. by Chris Cornutt

Artisanal: Project Creation

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Every developer has a set way of starting a new project. Most frameworks have a linear path to getting started, and Laravel is no exception. With a few commands, you can quickly get started configuring routes, writing controllers, and saving data in a database. by Joe Ferguson

finally: Happiness is a Boring Stack

Does the title of this article sound familiar to you? Well, I fully admit that I have borrowed this month’s title from a blog post, Happiness is a Boring Stack, which I recently read by Jason Kester (@jasonkester), with the same title. The article, in summary, talked about how Jason enjoyed staying on the cutting edge to keep advancing with the industry, but that on his projects he used the most basic boring stacks possible. by Eli White