Eventually, we expose the services offered by the PHP-powered APIs we build to users. Unlike a decade ago when we could count potential client applications on one hand, today the potential client can be anything. But for most people-facing applications, it still means HTML output with images and CSS. In this issue, we have articles to help keep your CSS know-how up to date, your twig components re-usable, and your dynamic front-end code quick.

The PHP compiler source code includes many patterns that can be frustrating and intimidating, because they are so different from typical PHP code, until we understand the structure and context. C’s preprocessor has a significant role in these unfamiliar patterns. We look at several of these patterns in the compiler’s PHP Array implementation.

Editor-in-Chief Oscar Merida records a mini-episode. In this first one, he looks at some RFCs submitted for PHP 7.4 and 8.0, and a new tool for detecting memory leaks with PHP Unit.

We continue our deep dive into how PHP implements arrays as hash tables. We’ll see how the collision chain works. We’re not ready to dig into the C implementation just yet, so we’ll see how to build and rebuild the hash table using PHP code. This month we’re learning how PHP arrays are stored and […]

The argument over strict typing is nothing new in PHP. When the PHP 7.0 release was under development and the idea of scalar type hinting came up, there were developers on all sides with opinions on how it should work. While PHP 7.0 could introduce backward compatibility breaks, introducing strict typing had the potential to […]

We all use PHP; it’s open source, which means anyone can take a look. However, it’s not as easy as with the various PHP frameworks, because PHP is written in C and makes heavy use of C preprocessor macros. We’ll see it’s relatively readable once we know how and where to look.

When developing an application, our aim as software developers is to make sure it does what it ought to do and to keep the number of defects as low as possible. We should also strive to make our lives easier, to counter external circumstances like tight deadlines and ever-changing requirements causing the exact opposite. That’s […]

By Colin DeCarlo As applications scale and gain adoption, dates and time become much more of a concern than they once were. Bugs crop up, and developers start learning the woes of time zones and daylight saving time. Why did that reminder get sent a day early? How could that comment have been made at […]

As applications scale and gain adoption, dates and time become much more of a concern than they once were. Bugs crop up, and developers start learning the woes of time zones and daylight saving time.

By Chris Holland In 2016, Ben Scholzen and Rasmus Schultz published their PHP RFC: Generic Types and Functions, aka The Generics RFC. Having worked with generics in other languages, I was very grateful and thrilled to come across this RFC, as I could immediately see the tremendous benefits this would bring to the PHP ecosystem. […]