Best of PHP — February 2026

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   Article

   Laravel News·8w

   What We Know About Laravel 13

   Laravel 13 is scheduled for Q1 2026 and will require PHP 8.3 as the minimum version. The headline feature is first-class PHP 8 Attributes support as an alternative to class properties for configuring Eloquent models (e.g., #[Table], #[Fillable], #[Hidden]), queue jobs (#[Connection], #[Tries], #[Timeout]), console commands (#[Signature]), form requests, API resources, and more. A new Cache::touch() method allows extending a cached item's TTL without fetching or re-storing the value, using driver-native commands like Redis EXPIRE. Support timeline runs bug fixes through Q3 2027 and security fixes through Q1 2028.

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   Article

   Laravel News·8w

   Laravel Adds an Official Svelte + Inertia Starter Kit

   Laravel now offers an official Svelte starter kit, complementing existing React, Vue, and Livewire options. The kit combines Svelte 5 with TypeScript, Inertia 2, Tailwind CSS, shadcn-svelte, bits-ui, and Vite. Authentication is powered by Laravel Fortify and includes login, registration, password reset, email verification, and two-factor auth. The kit ships with sidebar and header layouts, multiple variants for each, and SSR support out of the box. New projects can be bootstrapped via `laravel new my-app` and selecting Svelte when prompted.

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   Article

   Laravel News·9w

   Nimbus: An In-Browser API Testing Playground for Laravel

   Nimbus is a Laravel package that provides an in-browser API testing playground for development. It automatically discovers routes and validation rules from FormRequest classes, Spatie Data objects, or OpenAPI specs. Key features include transaction mode for testing destructive operations without data loss, user impersonation for authorization testing, shareable request configurations, automatic test data generation, and dd() output handling. Unlike Swagger or Scribe, it's not for customer-facing documentation but rather a developer tool to speed up API iteration.

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   Article

   Socket·8w

   Introducing PHP and Composer Support in Socket

   Socket now supports PHP and Composer, offering package search, SBOM generation, and supply chain security protection for PHP dependencies. The platform provides AI-powered analysis to detect zero-day threats, typosquatting, and backdoors beyond traditional CVE scanning. Key features include lockfile analysis, dev dependency tracking, vulnerability detection with CISA KEV enrichment, and proactive Packagist monitoring. Package search is available now for everyone, while SBOM generation and full security scanning are rolling out experimentally to customers.

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   Article

   PHP·9w

   PHP: PHP 8.4.18 Release Announcement

   PHP 8.4.18 is now available as a bug fix release. All PHP 8.4 users are encouraged to upgrade. Source downloads, Windows binaries, and the full changelog are available on the official PHP website.

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   Article

   Laravel News·9w

   Capture Web Page Screenshots in Laravel with Spatie's Laravel Screenshot

   Spatie's Laravel Screenshot package enables web page screenshot capture in Laravel applications through a driver-based architecture. It supports two drivers: Browsershot (using Chromium) and Cloudflare Browser Rendering API. Key features include customizable viewport dimensions, image quality control, queued background processing with callbacks, testing utilities with fake mode, and flexible disk storage options. The package defaults to 1280x800 viewport with 2x device scale factor and PNG format, waiting for network idle before capture.

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   Article

   DigitalOcean Community·7w

   How To Set Up Laravel, Nginx, and MySQL with Docker Compose

   A comprehensive step-by-step guide to containerizing a Laravel application using Docker Compose with Nginx and MySQL. Covers creating a docker-compose.yml with three services (PHP-FPM app, Nginx webserver, MySQL db), writing a custom Dockerfile based on php:8.3-fpm, configuring PHP settings via local.ini, setting up Nginx with FastCGI proxying to PHP-FPM, persisting MySQL data with named volumes, configuring Laravel's .env for container-based DB connections, running Artisan migrations inside containers, and troubleshooting common issues like 502 errors, permission problems, and database connection failures.

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   Article

   Laravel News·8w

   Laravel Releases Nightwatch MCP Server for Claude Code and AI Agents

   Laravel has released Nightwatch MCP, a Model Context Protocol server that enables AI agents like Claude Code to diagnose and resolve application issues. The tool exposes Laravel application context in a structured format, allowing developers to troubleshoot problems through conversational AI. Installation is straightforward for Laravel Boost users via composer update and artisan commands.

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   Article

   Laravel·10w

   Laravel January Product Releases

   Laravel's January 2025 releases introduce Private Cloud for enterprise deployments with dedicated Kubernetes infrastructure, Valkey caching with improved latency, and expanded Cloud API coverage. Forge adds Hetzner S3 backup support and automatic branch selection. Nightwatch gains AI-powered exception descriptions and real-time detection. The framework adds isolated Blade includes, vector embedding support, JSON:API resources, and backed enum support for session/cache keys. Inertia introduces form context hooks, while Boost 2.0 ships Skills for AI agents. Additional updates span Echo, Horizon, Pint, Pulse, and the VS Code extension with Livewire 4 support throughout.

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    Article

    Laravel News·8w

    Generate Secure, Memorable Passphrases in PHP with PHP Passphrase

    PHP Passphrase is a Bitwarden-inspired package that generates secure, human-readable passphrases by combining random words from the EFF word list. It offers customizable options for word count, separators, capitalization, and number inclusion, with first-class Laravel integration through facades and dependency injection, plus standalone PHP usage. The package supports custom word lists and includes publishable configuration for Laravel projects.

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    Article

    Larablog·10w

    NativePHP For Desktop

    NativePHP enables building native desktop applications using Laravel and PHP on top of Electron. Installation is straightforward via Composer, and development includes live reload capabilities through `composer native:dev`. The framework exposes Electron's native APIs to Laravel through an HTTP bridge, allowing PHP code to control desktop features like dock icons, menus, and badges. The architecture uses TypeScript files to wrap Electron functionality and PHP facades for developer-friendly access. The project is MIT-licensed, open source, and actively welcomes community contributions.

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    Article

    Symfony·7w

    Symfony 8.0.6 released (Symfony Blog)

    Symfony 8.0.6 has been released with over 80 bug fixes across numerous components including rate limiting, serialization, routing, security, messenger, console, validator, mailer, and more. Notable fixes include rate limiter retryAfter calculations, Redis sentinel auth handling, AMQP heartbeat reconnection, memory exhaustion in CssSelectorConverter, PHP 8.6 session compatibility, and many other edge case corrections throughout the framework.

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    Article

    Laravel News·7w

    Livewire v4.2.0 Released with Security Hardening and Laravel 13 Support

    Livewire v4.2.0 has been released with Laravel 13 compatibility and seven targeted security hardening improvements. Security changes include lifecycle method protection against frontend invocation, timing-safe checksum comparison using hash_equals(), payload schema validation, stricter X-Livewire header and JSON content type requirements, and web middleware enforcement on custom update routes. New developer features include reactive props during boot hooks and a $errors.clear() method on the JavaScript errors object. Bug fixes address an EventBus listener memory leak under Octane, silent failures for non-UTF-8 property data, broken route model binding with cached middleware, and wire:model failures with string array keys. No breaking changes are expected for typical applications.

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    Video

    CodeHead·8w

    99% of devs DON'T UNDERSTAND Laravel...

    Laravel provides powerful built-in features that most developers ignore, leading to bloated, hard-to-maintain code. Key underutilized features include the service container for automatic dependency injection, advanced Eloquent relationship methods with eager loading to prevent N+1 queries, and the queue system with Horizon for background job processing. Instead of writing manual solutions, developers should leverage Laravel's framework capabilities for cleaner, more scalable applications.

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    Stefan Mischook·8w

    Will PHP be Outdated in 2026?

    A developer with 30 years of experience argues that PHP will not become outdated, and neither will any modern programming language. The core argument is that languages are becoming less relevant as AI, low-code, and no-code tools reduce the amount of raw code developers write. Language choice should be driven by the job at hand rather than personal preference. The piece also notes that programming language fundamentals transfer easily between languages, making the surrounding ecosystem and stack more important than syntax. Junior developers are advised to focus on modern AI-driven development rather than becoming syntax or algorithm specialists.

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    Article

    Laravel·9w

    Larabelles: Building Space in the Laravel Community

    Larabelles is a non-profit organization founded in 2020 to create space for underrepresented developers in the Laravel community, particularly non-male developers. The organization offers conference scholarships, mentorship, networking opportunities, and a public directory to increase visibility and representation. Since launching its scholarship program in 2023, Larabelles has helped dozens attend Laravel conferences, with recipients reporting transformative career impacts including direct job opportunities. The community continues expanding in 2026 with scholarships to major Laravel events, a new podcast, and growing global membership.

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    Markus Staab·10w

    Automate the process to find a regression commit

    Git bisect can be automated using the `git bisect run` command to find regression commits without manual intervention. The process involves creating a test script that returns exit code 0 for expected behavior and non-0 for failures, then running `git bisect run ./test.sh` to automatically identify the first bad commit. This eliminates human error and saves time compared to manually testing each commit during bisection.

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    Video

    Laravel Daily·8w

    NEW: Laravel Svelte Starter Kit! (and more Laravel news)

    Laravel released a new Svelte starter kit for Laravel 12, becoming the fourth official starter kit alongside React, Vue, and Livewire options. The kit uses Inertia.js, Svelte 5, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn-svelte components. The video walks through installation using the Laravel installer and reviews the project structure. Additional Laravel ecosystem news includes: Laravel Nightwatch MCP integration for AI-assisted bug fixing, Nightwatch and Linear issue tracker integration, markdown-for-agents support in Laravel Cloud, a 'Continue with Google' button on Laravel Cloud powered by WorkOS, ongoing updates to Laravel AI SDK (v0.1.4) and Laravel Boost, and a side project called radio.laravel.cloud for background productivity music.

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    Article

    Laravel News·9w

    Laravel 12.51.0 Adds afterSending Callbacks, Validator whenFails, and MySQL Timeout

    Laravel 12.51.0 introduces notification afterSending callbacks for post-send logic, fluent whenFails and whenPasses validator methods for non-HTTP contexts, and a MySQL-specific query timeout method. The release adds closure support in firstOrCreate and createOrFirst for lazy evaluation of expensive operations, a BatchCancelled event for monitoring batch job cancellations, and the ability to use Eloquent builders directly as subqueries in updates. Additional improvements include a withoutHeader response method, enhanced batch testing assertions, cache isolation for parallel tests, and numerous bug fixes across database operations, string helpers, queue middleware, and framework internals.

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    Article

    PHP Dev·8w

    I built a free, open-source alternative var_dump() — real-time PHP debugging in the browser

    DebugPHP is a free, open-source PHP debugging tool that streams debug output to a browser-based dashboard in real-time using Server-Sent Events — no page reloads, no IDE integration, no desktop apps required. It offers a simple API via `Debug::send()` with support for labels, colors, inline timers, toolbar metrics, and array tables. The server component is fully self-hostable, requires PHP 8.1+ with only `ext-curl`, passes PHPStan Level 10 static analysis, and is installable via Composer. It positions itself as a free alternative to tools like Spatie Ray.

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