php[architect]

This article is dedicated to regular expressions. Regular expressions, or sometimes simply called regex, represent a powerful set of tools which allow developers to split strings, perform character su...

Most people are aware of how the Composer revolution came about, and the goal of getting everyone to play nicely together. For the most part, it seems to have worked, and more and more developers are...

Databases often have neat features that go unnoticed or lightly used that could make your life as a developer much easier. This article started its path to print at the php[tek] 2018 conference with a...

I work from home and making sure that there is a proper work/life balance is essential for mental and physical health. However, with the prevalence of remote work, it’s not as easy to separate the two...

This month we practice working “close to the hardware.” We’ll see why this is becoming more important to today’s software developers. We’ll use the PHP bitwise operators to manipulate single-bit binar...

Everyone on your team should have a good idea of the actual problem or feature they are working on before any code is written. Once the issue itself is ready to go, the work can begin. Every company w...

The PHP community makes a big deal about user groups, and for a good reason. Meeting up with local peers and creating a network of people can be beneficial. Many user groups will have a talk most mont...

Any application aimed at presenting users with a premium, seamless UX must take account of the times when user authentication fails. What happens when a user forgets their password? What can we do to...

Starting out as a freelance developer may seem daunting and the common misconception is that it’s a very unstable path. While there are ups and downs, their are no job guarantees today with any employ...

Debugging in PHP can be tedious and prone to errors when using var_dump and echo statements. Xdebug is a powerful tool that can be used for debugging PHP more effectively and for gaining better insigh...

This month we’re going to dive into PhpStorm and cover configuration from personal preferences to obeying standards and day to day usage. We’ll see how to use the features of an IDE to improve your pr...

One of the fantastic things about the PHP language is that we, the community, are constantly evolving it. If you take a look at PHP code from just a few years ago, it can appear alien compared to anyt...

This month I'm running with a collection of odds and ends of Laravel which I feel strongly about or that answer some common questions about Laravel and the related ecosystem. I find these issues to be...

Cloud technology can give applications greater flexibility, but it can be more complicated to maintain, especially for a monolithic legacy application. However, with a few tweaks, even older codebases...

In part one, we laid the practical groundwork for using test doubles. Let's explore the parts of Mockery that, in some cases, exit the realm of everyday usage and see how it can help us in dealing wit...

When I made the transition from hobbyist to professional programmer, I discovered it isn't enough for my code to work; it also has to be easy to maintain. At first, I wasn't sure how to make it happen...

Every successful development team has two things in common: they've shipped a product, and they accepted compromises to make that shipment possible. Every team and every project has technical debt. It...

In this era of "move fast and break things," organizations often fail to consider the long-term costs of decisions made for short-term gains. When projects cut corners, lack documentation and/or tests...

The tech industry is a relatively young industry, and in many ways, it shows. In one of my favorite books, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy talks about the birth of the open sou...

In this series, we look at using Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and specification by example to develop a RESTful API. In Part Two we introduce Behavior-Driven Development as a way of communicating...