We’re glad you enjoyed the first issue of our new PHP digest! Here is the next one. Plugins, libraries, extensions, tools, frameworks, and much more. Share it with your friends and colleagues to ensure nobody is missing the latest updates from the PHP world.

News & Releases

• PHP 7.2.0 Beta 1 — With the first beta release, the active development phase ends. Therefore, the list of new features in the 7.2 branch can be considered the final one. The next beta is expected on August 3. Meanwhile, you can try PHP 7.2 Pre-Release Docker Images.
• PhpStorm 2017.2 — Improved integration with Composer and Docker, autostart tests, and more. Video review of innovations.
• OpenAPI Specification 3.0.0 — Release of the specification for API description, formerly known as Swagger.
• silexphp/Pimple 3.2.0 —DI-container now fully supports PSR-11.
• Bolt 3.3.0 — Popular CMS based on Symfony components.

PHP Internals

• RFC: Same Site Cookie — It is suggested to add Same-site Cookie standard’s support in setcookie() and other functions for working with cookies.
• RFC: Raise warnings for json_encode() and json_decode() issues — Whenever json_encode() or json_decode() are called, you must call json_last_error() to check if a failure occurred.
• RFC: Short Closures — Short syntax for converting Callable to Closure:

$writeln = {Util\writeln};
// is a simplification for
$writeln = Closure::fromCallable('Util\writeln');

$writeln = {$terminal->writeln};
// instead of
$writeln = Closure::fromCallable([$terminal, 'writeln']);

• RFC: Mixed typehint — Adding mixed typehint:

function foo(mixed $arg): mixed {
   return $arg;
}

Tools

• jakzal/phpqa — All the popular tools for static PHP analysis in a single Docker-image.
• vaimo/composer-patches — Plugin for Composer, which allows you to apply patches to dependencies.
• SecureHeaders v2.0 — A PHP library aiming to make the use of browser security features more accessible. Details here.
• igorw/evenement — simple event dispatching library for PHP.
• leproxy/leproxy — HTTP/SOCKS proxy server.
• jcupitt/php-vips — PHP binding for libvips.
• travello-gmbh/amazon-alexa-skill-skeleton — PHP skeleton application for Amazon Alexa Skills.
• nikic/php-ast — Extension exposing PHP 7 abstract syntax tree.

Learning Materials

Symfony

• Symfony Core Team Updates
• The Bulletproof Event Naming For Symfony Event Dispatcher
• Podcast Sound of Symfony: Episode 18 — Event sourcing
• A week of Symfony #551 (17-23 July 2017)
• A week of Symfony #552 (24-30 July 2017)

Yii

• https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2-queue — Yii2 Queue Extension. Supports DB, Redis, RabbitMQ, Beanstalk and Gearman.

Laravel

• Laravel Horizon introduced — Horizon provides a beautiful dashboard and code-driven configuration for your Laravel powered Redis queues. Details here.
• JosephSilber/bouncer — Bouncer handles roles and abilities for Eloquent models.
• orchestral/tenanti — Multi-tenant Database Schema Manager for Laravel.
• Vuedo/vuedo — Blog platform, built with Laravel and Vue.js.
• Basics of Laravel Middleware
• Using Laravel Service Providers
• New in Laravel 5.5

Zend

• Reusing factories in Zend ServiceManager
• How to Create a Zend Expressive Module
• Zend Framework Community News for the week of 2017-07-20
• Zend Framework Community News for the week of 2017-07-27

Async PHP

• Async PHP — Guide to building real asynchronous PHP applications.
• Making Asynchronous HTTP Requests With ReactPHP
• Building Video Streaming Server with ReactPHP

and more:

• How to Write JavaScript-Style Test Watchers in PHP
• Don’t call instance methods statically
• TheCodingMachine Best Practices — Also,  the rules for Phpstan based on best practices.

Interesting

• Open source cloud platform Apache OpenWhisk (AWS Lambda’s analog) now supports PHP.
• owl-lang.org — web language compiled to PHP. Mix of PHP and JavaScript.
• PHP Roundtable #065: TestFest 2017