Best of PHP — 2025
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Laravel News·1y
NativePHP v1 is finally here!
NativePHP v1.0.0 has been released, enabling Laravel developers to build distributable desktop apps across major platforms. This milestone allows for faster realization of internal tools, consumer-facing apps, and hobby projects. The release drops support for Laravel 10 and PHP 8.1/8.2, highlighting the need for compatible tooling and dependencies. Upgrading is straightforward, with instructions provided for both existing and new users.
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Laravel launches Laravel Learn with two free mini-courses
Laravel has launched Laravel Learn, a new learning platform featuring two free mini-courses: a refreshed Laravel Bootcamp for absolute beginners and PHP Fundamentals covering the basics that power Laravel. The courses are taught by Josh Cirre and Christoph Rumpel respectively, available both on the dedicated learning site with progress tracking and as full-length YouTube videos. This initiative replaces the deprecated original Bootcamp and aims to provide a gentle entry point for new developers into the Laravel ecosystem.
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Laravel Dev·15w
PHP Is Alive But No Longer Strategic
PHP remains functional and profitable but has lost its strategic position in modern development. Laravel and WordPress sustain the ecosystem, yet GitHub activity shows declining innovation. Full-stack JavaScript offers superior development speed through unified language usage across all layers. The PHP user base skews toward older developers maintaining legacy systems. While PHP continues serving existing applications, it no longer drives modern architecture patterns like distributed systems and event-driven design.
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Laravel Kids·1y
Best Design Pattern source for Learning
Refactoring Guru provides comprehensive resources for learning design patterns in PHP. The site includes detailed explanations, examples, and practical advice for implementing various patterns in real-world projects. Ideal for anyone looking to enhance their software design skills.
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Laravel Developer Roadmap
Learn the essential skills and best practices to become a proficient Laravel developer, covering fundamentals such as PHP OOP concepts, routing, middleware, authentication, Blade templating, database management, and testing. Gain insights into advanced topics like performance optimization, REST API development, real-time features, CI/CD, and Laravel ecosystem tools.
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Community Picks·1y
deepseek-php/deepseek-laravel: Laravel wrapper for Deepseek PHP client, to seamless deepseek API integration with laravel applications.
This post introduces a Laravel wrapper for the Deepseek PHP client, enabling seamless API integration with Laravel applications. It provides instructions on installation via Composer, adding the API key to the .env file, and basic and customized ways to use the Deepseek client. Additionally, it mentions the testing phase, contributors, and the project's changelog. The package is available under the MIT License.
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Theo - t3․gg·46wIs PHP the new JS?
The post explores the resurgence of PHP as a viable language in modern web development, largely driven by the Laravel framework. The author reflects on their personal journey with PHP, discussing its historical challenges and recent performance improvements. Laravel is highlighted for its comprehensive features that simplify web application development, making PHP enjoyable to use again.
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Medium·45w
5 Hidden Laravel Features That Will Instantly Clean Up Your Code
Laravel offers several underutilized features that can significantly improve code quality and readability. Key features include @forelse for handling empty collections in Blade templates, when() method for conditional query building, sortByDesc() for collection sorting, isEmpty() for cleaner empty checks, and whereRelation() for simplified relationship filtering in Laravel 9+. These methods replace verbose conditional statements and make code more expressive and maintainable.
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Platformatic·46w
Seamlessly Blend PHP with Node.js
Platformatic introduces php-node, a Node.js module that allows developers to embed PHP within Node.js applications. The module utilizes Rust to execute PHP applications in a multi-threaded environment, providing enhanced performance and seamless integration. Key features include seamless integration, multi-threaded processing, improved performance, and a unified development environment. Use cases range from migrating legacy PHP apps to building hybrid applications. The post also provides examples of running PHP and WordPress inside a Node.js server.
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Filament v4 is Stable!
Filament v4 has been officially released as stable, bringing significant performance improvements including 3x faster table rendering for large datasets. Key new features include unified Schemas that combine form fields, infolist entries, and layout components; custom data tables that support non-Model-backed data with full pagination, search, and sorting capabilities; and a unified Actions namespace that eliminates import confusion. The release also introduces partial rendering solutions and automated upgrade scripts to ease migration from v3.
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NativePHP
NativePHP is expanding its capabilities to mobile platforms, enabling app development for both iOS and Android. An Early Access Program (EAP) offers exclusive benefits such as early access to code, documentation, and other resources, and allows members to influence the project’s direction. Annual licenses for the EAP cost $250 and include special perks like premium tools, starter kits, and discounts.
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FREEK.DEV·1y
Naming things is suddenly easier
Oh Dear is an all-in-one monitoring tool that provides uptime monitoring, SSL certificate checks, broken link detection, and more, with a user-friendly API and excellent documentation. The author shares programming tips, tutorials, and opinions through various platforms and a monthly newsletter, focusing on Laravel and modern PHP development.
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freeCodeCamp·48w
Top Ways Hackers Exploit Web Applications (and How to Prevent Them)
Web applications, particularly those with user input, are susceptible to attacks like SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and weak authentication. Developers can mitigate these risks by employing prepared statements for databases, escaping user inputs in HTML, using CSRF tokens, and enforcing strong authentication measures. Regularly updating libraries and ensuring secure configurations are crucial for protecting against vulnerabilities.
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Stop Writing Try/Catch Like This in Laravel
Identifies five common anti-patterns in Laravel exception handling that lead to production issues: blind catching of all exceptions, empty catch blocks, logging without context, transaction abuse, and controller bloat. Provides specific fixes including targeted exception catching, contextual logging, proper transaction scoping, and centralized exception handling through Laravel's global exception handler.
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Exakat·1y
The Top 100 PHP functions in 2024
A list of the top 100 most commonly used native PHP functions, ranked by usage frequency across 2500 open source PHP projects. The analysis shows that string, array, and file functions are most popular, while math functions based on operators and database functions using classes or components are less common. Insights highlight that certain functions could be replaced by operators, and some recently deprecated functions do not appear in the top 100. Recommendations include reviewing these functions for better understanding and integration into coding teams.
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Laravel 12 release date
Laravel 12 will be launched on February 24th, 2025, as announced at Laracon EU. This version will include new starter kits with options for React, Vue, or Livewire and will have zero-breaking changes. It's recommended to upgrade to Laravel 11 before the release, and Laravel Shift is suggested for an automatic upgrade process.
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stitcher.io·41w
The pipe operator in PHP 8.5
PHP 8.5 introduces the pipe operator (|>) that allows chaining function calls in a more readable way. Instead of deeply nested function calls or temporary variables, developers can pipe values through a series of transformations. The operator works with first-class callables for single-argument functions or closures for multi-argument functions. While currently requiring closures for complex operations, future partial function application support could make it even more concise.
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W endell Adriel·33w
Welcome to the State Machine Pattern
State machines provide a structured approach to managing complex workflows by defining explicit states, events, and transition rules. This pattern replaces tangled if/else logic with predictable, testable behavior using PHP enums, guards for validation, and actions for side effects. The implementation includes domain events with an outbox pattern to keep decision logic pure while handling side effects reliably. Key benefits include improved clarity, safety from forbidden transitions, better testability, and enhanced observability through logging and documentation generation.
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Create Self-Contained PHP Executables with PHPacker
PHPacker allows packaging any PHP script or PHAR into a standalone, cross-platform executable, simplifying distribution by bundling PHP with the application. You can install PHPacker via Composer and build for multiple platforms like Mac, Windows, and Linux. Configuration is possible via CLI options or a configuration file. Various PHP versions and custom PHP binaries can be used, making PHPacker versatile for many project requirements.
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It's never just that simple
The post discusses the complexities often overlooked in programming and introduces Oh Dear, a comprehensive monitoring tool for websites that offers uptime tracking, SSL certificate verification, and more. The author shares PHP development insights, tips, and tutorials through newsletters, with a focus on Laravel.
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Hacker News·41w
The Story of Max, a Real Programmer
A developer reflects on rewriting a 15-year-old PHP image hosting application in Go, only to discover that the original simple PHP code was superior despite being written by a teenager. The original 185-line PHP script proved more maintainable and elegant than the 305-line Go replacement, highlighting how simplicity often trumps sophisticated engineering. The story explores the value of straightforward, single-file solutions over complex, structured codebases, ultimately deciding to keep the original PHP version running.
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Laravel launches an OSS Advent Calendar
Laravel launched a holiday-themed microsite featuring an Advent Calendar that showcases a different open source package from the Laravel ecosystem each day from December 1-25. Each day reveals a short video, installation instructions, and project health stats for official Laravel packages including Pennant, Prompts, Telescope, Pail, Sail, Pint, Passport, Sanctum, and Octane. The calendar serves as a browsable catalog helping developers discover first-party Laravel tools with quick access to documentation, GitHub repositories, and composer install commands.
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7 PHP Operators Every Laravel Pro Should Master
Modern PHP operators can significantly improve code readability and safety. The null-safe operator (?->) eliminates nested null checks, null coalescing assignment (??=) simplifies default value setting, and the spread operator (...) streamlines array merging. The match expression provides a cleaner alternative to switch statements with strict comparison, while the spaceship operator (<=>) simplifies sorting logic. Understanding the difference between null coalescing (??) and Elvis (?:) operators prevents logic bugs, and chaining null coalescing operators creates clean fallback chains.
