Editor Bytes – Under the Scope

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It’s time to review some fundamentals and remind ourselves how some things we might take for granted work. This month, we have articles on serializing PHP objects, using middleware effectively, and measuring project metrics. We also cover tools to make your development setup more useful, how autoloading works, and building a composite to keep your application maintainable.

Many of us also assume that PHP grows and evolves automatically. With the release of PHP 8 coming up, now is an excellent time to remember it thrives because of the community of—for the most part—volunteers around it. Let’s assess how we contribute to keeping it welcoming and vibrant. Attend a (virtual) user group meetup or consider presenting at your local one. Thank a project maintainer, podcaster, or writer and let them know how their efforts have impacted your work. Also, download a PHP 8 beta and test it with your applications or try to compile it from source. There are many more ways to get involved. What are you waiting for?

In this issue, Mark Niebergall revisits a different approach to building APIs in Stacking Up Middleware. If you’re trying to shoehorn MVC into an API project, check it out. In Serializing PHP Objects, Larry Garfield dives into the benefits and challenges that arise with different approaches for serializing an object. How do you know if a measure is on track? Terri Morgan writes about Defining Project Metrics and helps you identify which metric is appropriate according to your circumstances.

Eric Van Johnson concludes his Community Corner interview in PHP 8 Release Managers: Interview with Sara Golemon and Gabriel Caruso, Part Three. They discuss what’s involved in being a release manager and touch on what happened to PHP 6. In Education Station: Autoloading Your Code, Chris Tankersley reviews the evolution of autoloading in PHP and how Composer uses it today. It’s not something we have to regularly consider or debug, but understanding what’s going on under the hood is invaluable if it breaks for some reason. In PHP Puzzles, Sherri Wheeler offers three solutions to last month’s challenge for Calculating Population Growth and discusses the type gotcha she ran into. Don’t miss this month’s puzzle, either. Eric Mann highlights a security tool you can use from Mozilla in Security Corner: Observable Security. You can use this online scanner to test that your applications implement the measure recommended to protect it and keep your users safe. Edward Barnard continues his quest to discover the secret to avoiding the Big Ball of Mud and may have found it in Sustainable PHP: Build a Composite. Joe Ferguson builds on last months’ work in The Workshop and has three tools you need in your setup in Mail, Ngrok, And Xdebug in WSL. Take the time to set up each of those tools, and they’ll pay off by boosting your productivity. In finally{}: We Are All Programmers, Eli White explains why we need to stop judging what makes someone a “real” programmer to build an inclusive community.

Air date	September 10, 2020
Hosted by	Oscar Merida
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