Hi everyone,
It's Thursday and it's time for another instalment of you weekly Php news and updates. This week we have a new Xdebug update. We also have the final release candidate of PHP 8.5. We also have new updates from Symfony and PHPStorm released an article on plugins you might not know. In podcasts this week we have new episodes from No Compromises where they argue about how non-tech reading can sharpen your engineering thinking. Developer Tea expounds on Taking Ownership Without Leading Projects, while The Changelog chats about the new AI-led tech role that has emerged with a massive increase of job postings. Finally in our Reading section we have articles on HTTP Parameter Pollution, automating Laravel Releases, and A Reflection on Software Development and Open Source.
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
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Articles
Stop Writing Arrays in Your Tests: Laravel Factories for Data Objects
Building the Laravel Ortto SDK taught me something: test setup shouldn't be harder than the actual testing. When you are integrating with an API that expects complex, nested payloads, raw arrays turn your tests into unreadable nightmares fast.
5 Subtle Mistakes Even Experienced Developers Make in Laravel 12 — and How to Avoid Them
As seasoned developers, we often believe we’ve covered the fundamentals. But with Laravel 12 (released Feb 2025) with its refinements, new starter-kits (React, Vue, Livewire + WorkOS AuthKit) and updated dependencies there are new blind-spots. This article spotlights five common traps and how to steer clear of them.
Level Up Your Laravel: Advanced Techniques for Elegant and Powerful Applications
Laravel makes the easy things effortless, but its true power lies in the advanced features that enable you to write clean, maintainable, and incredibly powerful code. Let's move beyond basic CRUD and explore some advanced techniques that will seriously level up your Laravel game.
The `#[SensitiveParameter]` Attribute in PHP 8.2+
During debugging and error monitoring, it's common for stack traces to be recorded in logs. However, these traces can accidentally capture and expose critical data, such as passwords, API tokens, or credit card numbers. PHP 8.2 solves this problem with the introduction of the #[SensitiveParameter] attribute.
PHP 8.5: New PHP_BUILD_DATE Constant Explained
A new PHP 8.5 constant that stores the date and time when your PHP binary was compiled. Before this, that info lived only inside phpinfo() output — messy, inconsistent, and hard to parse automatically.
5 Laravel Eloquent Secrets That Will Make You a Better Developer
After 2+ years working with Laravel, I discovered these 5 Eloquent techniques that completely changed how I build applications. Number 3 will save you hours of debugging!
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Tutorials and Talks
Image optimization and compression techniques for ultra-fast Laravel/PHP image uploads and display
Creating ultra-fast image uploads and on-the-fly display in Laravel/PHP requires aggressive optimization. Even a few megabytes of raw image data can ruin page performance, as users expect sites to load quickly—almost 40% abandon a page if it takes over 3 seconds.
Migrating a Laravel Application From a Relational Database (PostgreSQL) to MongoDB
In this tutorial, we will take a sample Laravel blog app (with users, posts, and comments) that’s running on PostgreSQL and migrate it to MongoDB.
Mastering Laravel Task Scheduler: Building Smart, Reliable, and Fully Automated Applications
In this guide, we’ll explore advanced, real-world scheduling patterns — from running intelligent background jobs to designing fault-tolerant workflows — all with fresh examples you won’t find elsewhere.
Creating custom Facade fakes in Laravel
I recently released a new version of my Cloudflare Turnstile package for Laravel. One of the features I added was the ability to test your Turnstile integrations using a fake implementation of the Turnstile client.
Cache Pre-warming Explained - Laravel In Practice EP11
Ever cleared your cache and watched the first user hit a slow response? That’s the “cold cache” problem and it can make even the fastest apps feel sluggish right after deployment or cache invalidation. In this episode of Laravel In Practice, I’ll show you how to pre-warm your cache so users always experience instant load times.
The Practical Guide to Laravel + Nova on OpenAI Codex Web
Private packages (like Laravel Nova) need credentials at install time. On Codex Web, secrets are only exposed during the Setup phase. If you try to install Nova later, auth won’t be available and Composer will 401. This guide shows a battle‑tested structure you can copy for your Laravel project.
Fixing Filament v2’s Multiple Select: The Disabled Options Problem
When you use multiple select in Filament v2, disableOptionWhen() doesn't work. Say you want to show system-generated tags (like VIP or High Priority) but prevent users from removing them.
Quick Stripe Integration Guide for Laravel Users
Have you ever wondered why some websites make online payments feel as smooth as butter while others leave you frustrated and clicking away? The secret often lies in their payment gateway integration. |
News and Announcements
PHP 8.5.0 RC4 available for testing
The PHP team is pleased to announce the final planned release candidate of PHP 8.5.0, RC 4. This continues the PHP 8.5 release cycle, the rough outline of which is specified in the PHP Wiki.
Xdebug Update: October 2025
In this update I explain what happened with Xdebug development in the last two months.
Background Queue Connection in Laravel 12.37
The Laravel team released version 12.37.0 this week, with new background queue driver, a Factory insert method, a ucwords() string method, and more.
PhpStorm Plugins You Might Not Know
PhpStorm comes with a ton of built-in features, and you can add even more with plugins. They bring new languages, tools, and small improvements that make everyday coding smoother.
Early Bird Tickets are out for Laracon EU - Secure Your Spot by Nov 22!
Are you ready for two days of Laravel magic in Amsterdam? Early Bird tickets for Laracon EU are now available, but only until November 22nd.
Symfony 7.3.6 released
Symfony 7.3.6 has just been released. Read the Symfony upgrade guide to learn more about upgrading Symfony and use the SymfonyInsight upgrade reports to detect the code you will need to change in your project.
November 3–9, 2025 - A Week of Symfony #984
This week, Symfony released maintenance versions 6.4.28 and 7.3.6. Meanwhile, we kept refining the upcoming Symfony 7.4 and 8.0 releases. Finally, we shared new details about some of the talks planned for SymfonyCon Amsterdam 2025.
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Podcasts and Vlogs
The Stack Overflow: AI code means more critical thinking, not less
Ryan is joined by Secure Code Warrior’s co-founder and CTO Matias Madou to discuss the implications of LLMs’ variability on code security, the future of developer training as AI coding assistants become more popular, and the importance of critical thinking—especially for junior developers—in the age of AI.
No Compromises Podcast: Read outside tech to expand your horizons
In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, Aaron argues that non-tech reading can sharpen your engineering thinking. We discuss balancing breadth without diluting focus, and how to turn casual reading into active learning with quick capture habits.
Software Engineering Radio: SE Radio 693: Mark Williamson on AI-Assisted Debugging
Mark Williamson, CTO of Undo, joins host Priyanka Raghavan to discuss AI-assisted debugging. The conversation is structured around three main objectives: understanding how AI can serve as a debugging assistant; examining AI-powered debugging tools; exploring whether AI debuggers can independently find and fix bugs.
Developer Tea: Getting to Senior - Taking Ownership Without Leading Projects
If you're an engineer looking to move into a senior role, you have likely heard that you need to demonstrate "ownership". Unfortunately, this crucial term is often poorly defined and leads to a major misconception: that ownership means being assigned a full project or a Tech Lead role.
Shoptalk Show: 690: Steve Ruiz and tldraw
Steve Ruiz talks about what tldraw is and who it's for, how they've dealt with data on all the computers, what's new in the tldraw SDK, ideas for building on top of tldraw, tldraw's business model, and what the future holds for tldraw the company.
WP Builds: 444 – Accessibility made easier: Natalie MacLees on Aaardvark for agencies and developers
On this episode of WP Builds, Natalie MacLees joins Nathan Wrigley to talk about the new accessibility tool, Aaardvark Accessibility.
PHP Architect: PHP Alive And Kicking – Episode 12 – Rob Allen
Rob’s journey into PHP started in 1995—way back in the last century, as he puts it—when he got headhunted from a C++ role testing mobile phones. The twist? He was in an online gaming guild that needed a website, discovered PHP 3, and thought “this is way easier than writing C++.” Three decades later, he’s still here.
Mostly Technical: 106: We've Got ARR!
Ian and Aaron talk about 20 years of HelpSpot, Aaron's big week on Twitter, and....talk about burying the lede....Aaron's got ARR! Subscription revenue! It's happening!
Syntax: Why v0 creator left Vercel to fix GitHub (GOAT Jared Palmer)
Scott and Wes sit down with Jared Palmer of GitHub (formerly of Vercel) to unpack all the biggest announcements from GitHub Universe 2025.
The Changelog: This new AI role is exploding
A new AI-led tech role has emerged with a massive increase of job postings, Corey Quinn explains why younger devs won’t tolerate pain in the AWS, Thomas Ptacek makes the case that you should write an agent, Paul Kinlan goes deeper on his dead framework theory, and Andrew Gallagher says to stop vibe coding your unit tests.
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Keycloak, WebSockets & Symfony: Solving Real-Time Auth Without Sacrificing Performance
Greetings, fellow developers. I’ve seen teams master the art of stateless authentication, building beautiful, scalable REST APIs. But the moment the business asks for a real-time feature — a live chat, a notification feed, a collaborative dashboard — a new challenge emerges.
Reinventing the Wheel: A Reflection on Software Development and Open Source
A couple of months ago, I posted an article about it on an Italian forum. I was very surprised by the comments, and I decided to write this piece to reflect on how the open-source software landscape has changed.
Stop Managing Laravel Releases Manually: Automate Your Entire Workflow
Whether you’re building a SaaS/PaaS app, API, or internal tool with Laravel, stop manually writing changelogs and managing version tags. Laravel Release Manager automates your entire release workflow using Conventional Commits.
When a Host Header Attack Broke My IIS + PHP App
After several years in web development, I recently encountered a lesser-known security issue — Host Header Attack. I searched online and discussed it with my team, but didn’t have much luck finding a proper fix for this threat.
HTTP Parameter Pollution: Making Servers Disagree on What You Sent
In the constantly evolving landscape of web application security, attackers continually develop sophisticated techniques to circumvent protective measures.
Architectural debt is not just technical debt
We always made a distinction between code debt and architecture debt: code debt being the temporary hacks you put in place to reach a deadline and never remove, and architectural debt being the structural decisions that come back to bite you six months later.
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Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
flatorb/moldssp
A package library to use laravel pagination with datatables and mongodb.
astrotechlabs/yii2-tactician
Yii 2 Command Bus pattern implementation.
marcandreappel/flysystem-backblaze
Backblaze adapter for the flysystem filesystem abstraction library.
keycdn/cdn-enabler
A content delivery network (CDN) integration plugin for WordPress that rewrites URLs, like for CSS, JavaScript, and images, to be served by a CDN.
codeat3/blade-mono-icons
A package to easily make use of Mono Icons in your Laravel Blade views.
actengage/nova-wizard
Turn your long and complex resource forms into a simple and clean multi-step process.
blinq/openai
PHP library wrapper for the OpenAI API.
kronova/pr-googlecse
Frontend search plugin that uses the Google CSE api.
darkcs/yii2-infinite-scroll
Link pager with infinite scroll support.
atnic/laravel-inspinia
Laravel Package for integrating Inspinia template and this package is Laravel Mix friendly.
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Jobs
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