Hi everyone,
We hope you're all having a good week as we send of a fresh edition of our weekly newsletter. This week we have articles on understanding Symfony lock and Symfony semaphore, Database and PHP performance optimisation, and insights from JetBrains PHPVerse Conference. In Tutorials we have guides on documenting API responses, PHP Date Functions, n8n workflows and Hexagonal architecture in Laravel. In Podcasts we have new episodes from Laravel News about New Pest and Laravel in practice. Mostly technical deep dive inyo what's cooking with Database School, and The Changelog asks why AI coding claims don't add up. Finally in our Reading section we have articles on Laravel Tab session guard, Refactoring Laravel models and the language choice dilemma.
We have all that and more, so we do hope you enjoy this week's newsletter. If you have an article, tutorial or podcast that you would like to be featured in our newsletter, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
All the best,
Adrian
|
Please help us by clicking to our sponsors:
|
Articles
A Deep Dive into PHP Performance Optimization: Caching Strategies and Best Practices
In this in-depth article, we’ll explore one of the most powerful tools in the PHP performance optimization toolkit: caching. We’ll dive into the principles behind caching, examine popular caching technologies like Redis, Memcached, and APCu, and see how they can be applied in real-world scenarios.
Understanding in simple terms: symfony lock versus symfony semaphore
For software developers, managing shared resources is a constant challenge. The Symfony framework, for instance, offers robust tools to handle this scenario, and two of them, Lock and Semaphore, are often confused.
Database Optimization: Techniques, Benefits, and Best Practices
Every application lives or dies by the speed and reliability of its data layer. When the database drifts from optimal to merely “fine,” user experience erodes, infrastructure costs climb, and development slows under the weight of mysterious performance regressions.
Laravel Strict Validation: Precise Type Checking
Type juggling in PHP can lead to subtle validation bugs where "1" passes as a boolean or numeric string gets accepted as an integer. Laravel's new strict validation modes eliminate this ambiguity by enforcing exact type matching.
Insights from JetBrains PHPverse Conference Part 1 — System-Level Innovation in the PHP Ecosystem
For those who don’t have the time or patience to sit through the dense sessions, this article distills the most critical takeaways, highlighting the ecosystem’s focus on solving tough, foundational challenges.
|
Tutorials and Talks
Stop Repeating Query Logic: Laravel Query Scopes Make Your Code Readable
We've all written the same where clauses across multiple controllers. You know the ones filtering for completed orders from this month, finding popular products above a certain price, or loading specific relationships. This repetitive query logic clutters your codebase and makes maintenance a nightmare.
In-depth guide on documenting API responses with Scramble
Documenting API responses can be one of the trickier parts of building an API with Laravel. It's easy for documentation to become outdated or incomplete as your project evolves.
Adding Autocomplete to Your Laravel Applications
Implementing a search feature has become hugely important for every web app that values user experience, as users can search for what they need to see without scrolling endlessly.
PHP Date Function Guide: Learn to Format Dates Like a Pro
Ever stared at a jumble of numbers like 20250904 and wondered, “How do I turn this into something human-friendly?” You’re not alone! Working with dates in PHP can feel like decoding secret messages at first.
Manage your n8n workflows and API directly from PHP
Managing your n8n workflows and API directly from PHP allows developers to integrate automation into their applications more efficiently.
Simplify AI-Agent Deployment: Dockerizing Symfony for Scalable
This article will guide you through the process of containerizing a Symfony application using Docker and Docker Compose.
Building a JSON CRUD API in PHP
This guide explains how to build a JSON-based API in PHP, covering setup, CRUD operations, and best practices.
How to Build a Powerful WordPress Directory with Custom Fields and Advanced Search
WordPress is not just for blogging. With the right combination of plugins and custom code, you can turn it into a powerful platform for almost any kind of data-driven website, including a searchable directory.
Laravel Performance Boost with OPcache Preloading
For Laravel applications, one of the most effective ways to enhance speed and efficiency is by leveraging OPcache.
Hexagonal Architecture in Laravel: Scaling Beyond MVC
Below is a practical, production-ready guide to applying hexagonal principles in Laravel — with a realistic directory layout, interfaces (ports), adapters, bindings, tests, jobs, and a safe migration path. |
News and Announcements
Connect MCP Servers to Junie in PhpStorm
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard introduced by Anthropic. Think of it as a USB-C port for AI: a consistent way to plug the AI models your AI agent uses into specific tools and data sources.
The Bifrost is About to Open
Bifrost — the hosted build service for NativePHP — officially launches Tuesday, September 9th.
Use Amazon's new Fair Queue Feature With SQS in Laravel 12.27
The Laravel team released version 12.27.0 this week, introducing support for SQS FIFO queue message group IDs in Laravel. Group IDs unlock the ability to utilize Amazon's fair queue feature in SQS. Additionally, v12.27 has a few new features—let's look at what's new:
September 1–7, 2025: A Week of Symfony #975
This week, Symfony development activity focused on merging new features for the upcoming Symfony 7.4 and 8.0 versions: added a Video constraint, introduced an access_decision() Twig function to get the security voter decision details, and added support for DTOs in Input attributes for invokable commands. We also announced that Symfony will provide the official MCP SDK for PHP, announced the first talks of the SymfonyCon Amsterdam 2025 conference and continued celebrating the legacy of Ryan Weaver.
CakeFest: The Cakephp Conference: Madrid, Oct 9th - 10th 2025
Every spring we hold our annual conference dedicated to CakePHP. For the past 10 years, the framework has been a benchmark for PHP development, providing developers with a full MVC stack solution to build powerful applications which scale.
|
Podcasts and Vlogs
Laravel News Podcast: New Pest, speaker bingo, and Laravel in Practice
Jake and Michael discuss all the latest Laravel releases, tutorials, and happenings in the community.
The Stack Overflow: We built stackoverflow.ai with the community and for the community
Ryan is joined by our very own Ash Zade, Staff Product Manager, and Alex Warren, Staff Software Engineer, to discuss our newly released stackoverflow.ai, how it’s enhancing user experience by combining human-validated answers with AI, and our future plans for deeper personalization and community integration.
Software Engineering Radio: SE Radio 684: Dan Bergh Johnsson and Daniel Deogun on Secure By Design
Daniel Deogun and Dan Bergh Johnsson — two of the co-authors of the book, Secure by Design — discuss the intersection of good software design and security with host Sam Taggart.
Developer Tea: This One Skill Signifies Seniority For Software Engineers
This episode explains what is arguably the best career advice you'll hear this week: the one skill that signifies seniority in software engineers is the ability to synthesise and optimise for multiple factors at once.
Shoptalk Show: 681: CSS Reset Update, Arc Gets Bought, and Why Websites?
Chris is updating us on the progress of his CSS reset, thoughts on The Browser Company and Arc being bought by Atlassian, and in 2025 why would anyone build a website?
WP Builds: 435 – “At The Core” with Birgit Pauli-Haack and Anne McCarthy – Episode 4
In this episode of WP Builds “At The Core,” Nathan Wrigley, Birgit Pauli-Haack, and Anne McCarthy recap recent and upcoming WordPress core developments. They highlight the roadmap to WordPress 6.9.
Laravel Podcast: Inside Laravel Customer Support with Feri Bartha
In this episode of the Laravel Podcast, Matt talks with Feri Bartha, Laravel’s Director of Customer Success and Support.
PHP Architect: PHP Podcast: 2025.09.04
This week on the PHP Podcast, Eric and John talk about Fixes to PHPTek.tv Login, New PHP Architect Merch Store, Wire-Live the Livewire InPerson Event, Perks to Caddy Web Server, PHP Stream Server, and more.
Mostly Technical: 98: Inventing The Wheel
Ian and Aaron dive deep into what's cooking with Database School and discuss everything from upcoming videos to the correct business model to Aaron's wild fly.io setup and a lot more.
Syntax: CJ Made A Sega Game in 2025
CJ takes us behind the scenes of Hackweek to share how he built a custom Sega Genesis game from scratch, complete with assembly code, level loading, and retro hardware tricks.
The Changelog: Why AI coding claims don't add up
Mike Judge breaks down why he doesn’t believe the AI coding claims add up, the folks behind Cactoide create an open source alternative to Meetup / Eventbrite, Ryan Farley tells the story of how RSS beat Microsoft, Dominik SzymaÅ„ski ditched Docker for Podman (and thinks you should too), and Stripe announces a new layer 1 blockchain called Tempo.
|
|
The Language Choice Dilemma: Between Pragmatism and Development Joy
After several years juggling between PHP, Python, and Java in my career, I find myself facing a reality that many developers know well: the gap between what I use at the office and what I choose for my personal projects.
Laravel Tab Session Guard — Because Your Users Don’t Need 99 Tabs Open
If you’ve ever worked on a CRM, ERP, or any enterprise app, you already know the chaos that happens when users open the same application in 5 different tabs.
Solving the N+1 Problem in Laravel with Eloquent
If a page runs fine in development but crawls under load, the N+1 problem is a likely suspect.
A little gift: infographic of reserved words in PHP
Because those new to PHP, especially, have trouble remembering which identifiers to use to name variables, objects, etc., I thought it would be helpful to provide an infographic that can be quickly consulted to see if I’m using an incorrect name.
Refactoring Laravel Models: From Bloated to Beautiful
Recently, I revisited one of my Laravel models — a classic case of “too much logic, too little structure.” Instead of letting it grow into a monolith, I decided to modularize it using Traits — and the results were game-changing.
|
Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
ssm/theme-boilerplate
Theme boilerplate which contains a collection of basic theme modules for SSM projects.
macsidigital/laravel-uuid
Laravel UUID package.
ssm/core
A collection of modules to implement custom admin and public WordPress customization for SSM projects.
webfiori/vuetify-core
A base theme which holds basic structure for building Vuetify based themes.
manuwhat/strip-tags
Remove PHP and HTML Tags from a string in a custom and efficient way.
quickbooks/payments-sdk
The Official PHP SDK for QuickBooks Online Payments API.
mauris/yaml
Mauris Build of the Symfony Yaml Component.
gkovrey/postgres-search-bundle
Tools to use full-text search PostgreSQL in Doctrine.
ride/web-cms-varnish
Varnish integration for the CMS of a Ride application.
jelix/version
Parse any version syntax, including semantic version. Compare version, using Composer version constraints syntax.
|
Jobs
------
Do you have a position that you would like to fill? PHP Weekly is ideal for targeting developers and the cost is only $75/week for an advert. Please let me know if you are interested by emailing me at [email protected] |
Please help us by clicking to our sponsor:
 Protect your PHP Code
Why not try SourceGuardian 16. Click here to download a 14 Day Trial copy. Protect your code using Windows, Linux or Mac and run everywhere with our free Loaders. |
So, how did you like this issue?
|
|
|
|
