Hi everyone,
Week after week we bring you the latest news and updates on anything and everything PHP. In this week's edition, we have news on the PHP Foundation's search for a new Executive Director, as Roman Pronskiy will conclude his tenure after four years in the foundation's role of executive director. Symfony 7.4.0, the pre-release version has launched this week along with the latest version of Laravel 12.38 that adds Cache Routes and config during testing. In tutorials we have guides for Modernizing Code with Rector, Creating your first custom Phpstan rule, and Understanding Intersection Types in PHP And Laravel. Finally in our Reading section we have articles on Async failure recovery, The shortcut syndrome, and A Practical Approach to Scalable, Multi-Column, Multi-Sort Searching in Large Applications for Any Laravel Model.
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
Writing Maintainable Feature test(Real Laravel example)
In this post, I’ll walk through a real-world inspired example from a warehouse module where I had to ensure zones (locations in a warehouse) could only be deactivated or updated under specific conditions.
PHP’s Next Chapter: From Web Framework to Agent Framework
I've spent the last year building Neuron, a PHP framework designed specifically for agentic AI applications. What started as a technical challenge became something else entirely when developers began reaching out with stories I wasn't prepared to hear.
Time as a Dependency: Advanced Patterns with the Symfony Clock
With Symfony 7.3 (released May 2025) and PHP 8.4, the symfony/clock component is no longer just a utility — it is the backbone of deterministic application architecture.
A Clean, Driver-Aware ORM Architecture in PHP
I recently completed a major refactor of my custom ORM, evolving it from a hybrid Active Record structure into a clean, layered, driver-aware architecture. The new design removes hidden “magic”, improves type-safety, and gives each component a precise, single responsibility.
PHP 8.5 Just Leveled Up the Entire Language — The Features You Can’t Ignore
Let’s be honest — PHP has been through a lot. For years, it carried the weight of old memes about being “outdated.” But with every new release, PHP has quietly reinvented itself — and PHP 8.5 is where that transformation hits full stride.
Laravel Architecture: 7 Traps and Practical Fixes
The author has repeatedly encountered the opinion among colleagues that development experience in Symfony and Laravel is equivalent. Both are good, everyone is happy. In reality, Laravel accelerates development, but the price of speed is the risk of architectural sprawl of logic.
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Tutorials and Talks
Modernizing Code with Rector - Laravel In Practice EP12
Ever inherit a Laravel project with outdated patterns, or find yourself manually updating code across dozens of files when Laravel releases new features? That's where Rector PHP comes in.
Authentication With Laravel and MongoDB
Thank you very much for joining me for this tutorial, where you’ll learn how to set up user authentication for Laravel and MongoDB. We start by setting up a local development environment, going over some changes to the files, and finally, having a complete basic authentication running with MongoDB.
Create your first custom Phpstan rule
When PHPStan analyzes a PHP file, the first step is parsing, converting the raw PHP source code into a structured tree that represents the syntax and semantics of your code.
PHP OOP Mastery Series — A Complete Beginner-to-Advanced Guide
Welcome to the PHP OOP Mastery Series, a complete journey designed to take you from beginner to advanced in Object-Oriented Programming using PHP.
Mastering JWT Auth in Laravel from Zero — Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, we prepared a clean Laravel foundation for working with JWT authentication. We explored how JWTs work, installed the firebase/php-jwt library, created a configuration file, and built a reusable JwtService capable of generating and decoding tokens.
Understanding Intersection Types in PHP And Laravel: The Next Step Toward Safer, Smarter Code
In this article, we’ll dive deep into intersection types, explore real-world use cases (especially in Laravel applications), and learn how they help us write safer, cleaner, and more predictable code.
How to Configure PHP max_execution_time to Prevent Timeouts
Have you ever waited forever for a webpage to load, only to be greeted by a frustrating “Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded” error? This common issue is often caused by hitting the max_execution_time limit set in your server’s PHP configuration.
PHP Mailer Tutorial with Examples and Best Practices
In this guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to know about php mailer in plain English, with live code snippets and practical tips. Ready to become an email-sending pro?
Deploying Laravel on Google Cloud Platform: The Complete Production Guide
In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through deploying a production-ready Laravel application. |
News and Announcements
The PHP Foundation is Seeking a New Executive Director
We're opening the search for our next Executive Director, marking an important milestone in the continued growth and evolution of the PHP Foundation.
Cache Routes and Config During Testing in Laravel 12.38
The Laravel team released version 12.38.0 this week, adding a WithCachedRoutes test trait, a WithCachedConfig test trait, a model prompt for the model:show command, and more.
New Book: Laravel for the Rest of Us launches November 18, 2025
A new book titled Laravel for the Rest of Us by Pete Heslop, Managing Director of Steadfast Collective and an official Laravel Partner, will be released worldwide on November 18, 2025.
CodeRabbit raised $60M and celebrated with a hilarious short film
A few months back, CodeRabbit announced a $60 million Series B, and to celebrate, they made a funny video featuring none other than Aaron Francis.
All Talks for Wire:Live are Available on YouTube
Livewire's 2025 Wire:Live conference talks are now available in a YouTube playlist.
Symfony 7.4.0-RC2 released
Symfony 7.4.0-RC2 has just been released. This is a pre-release version of Symfony 7.4. If you want to test it in your own applications before its final release, run the following commands.
November 10–16, 2025 - A Week of Symfony #985
This week, Symfony released maintenance versions 5.4.50, 6.4.29, and 7.3.7 to address a potential security vulnerability. Meanwhile, we continued polishing the upcoming Symfony 7.4 and 8.0 releases and published 7.4.0 RC1 and 8.0.0 RC1. Finally, we shared new details about several of the talks planned for SymfonyCon Amsterdam 2025.
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Podcasts and Vlogs
The Stack Overflow: How to create agents that people actually want to use
Ryan welcomes Assaf Elovic, head of AI at monday.com, to discuss creating AI tools that users will actually adopt, how they created their Monday Sidekick agent with the user experience in mind, and the opportunities that AI creates for better productivity and more efficiency.
Maintainable Podcast: Chris Zetter: Building a Database to Better Understand Maintainability
In this conversation, Robby sits down with software engineer and author Chris Zetter to explore what building a relational database from scratch can teach us about maintainability,
Software Engineering Radio: SE Radio 694: Jennings Anderson and Amy Rose on Overture Maps
Jennings Anderson, a Software Engineer with Meta Platforms, and Amy Rose, the Chief Technology Officer at Overture Maps Foundation, speak with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Overture Maps project, which creates reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data.
Shoptalk Show: 691: Charts + Graphs, Vibe Coding an App, and Debating Affordances
What do Balatro streamers do when the game is over, Random in CSS is so hot right now, Dave has a better idea for charts and graphs that would change the world, Quiet UI follow up, Dave tries vibe coding a tennis app and doesn't completely John McEnroe his laptop, Chris wonders about better cursor UI on the web, and debating affordances vs conventions.
WP Builds: 445 – More fun in WordPress: How Nick Hamze uses AI to build unusual WordPress blocks
In this episode, Nathan Wrigley chats with Nick Hamze, a quirky and creative force in the WordPress community. Nick shares his unconventional journey from law school to working at Automattic, running a wildly successful Pokémon card shop, and building unique WordPress blocks using AI tools like Telex.
Laravel Podcast: From Math Teacher to DevRel with Leah Thompson
In this episode, Matt Stauffer interviews Leah Thompson, a DevRel engineer at Laravel, who shares her unique journey into tech, transitioning from a mathematics background and teaching to web development.
PHP Architect: PHP Alive and Kicking Episode 14 – Dan Newns
Dan’s programming journey started in secondary school with Visual Basic—specifically building a cinema booking system. But it was university where things got real: HTML with tables (no CSS!), lots of style tags, and a very old version of PHP.
Mostly Technical: 107: A Ruthless Capitalist
Ian and Aaron discuss screen time for kids, the impending launch of Database School, why Ian acquired Bootstrapped.fm, and more.
Over Engineered: Storing Files in the Database w/ Bogdan Kharchenko and Skyler Katz
Sometimes you have files or other large chunks of data that you need to associate with a record in your database. It might be convenient to just store that as base64-encoded data or HTML in a "longtext" column, but that can eventually cause issues—especially as the table grows. What other options are there?
The Changelog: Why is Zig so cool?
Nilo Stolte explains why Zig is “a totally new way to write programs”, George Mack gives twelve actionable ways to be more creative, Mario Zechner shares his findings on using MCP vs Bash tools, Josh Collinsworth compares creating AI art to medieval alchemy, LibrePods unlocks AirPods features for Android, and our first ever Changelog News Classifieds.
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Saloon vs Guzzle vs SDK vs Http Facade for Laravel API Integrations
The following article is a short snippet from the "Building an API Integration Using Saloon" chapter of my book "Consuming APIs In Laravel".
Visionary Leadership Required
PHP’s governance model differs from most engineering organizations in that it lacks any kind of formal leadership. Instead of decisions being taken on deeply analytical technical merit, and aligned with the goals of the organization, decisions are made by a mixture of technical and non-technical experts following a free-for-all discussion; often discussions are hard to follow, bloated, and don’t always result in a clear consensus.
Async Failure Recovery: Queue vs Streaming Channel Strategies
This article will change how you think about asynchronous systems. You’ll understand why a recovery strategy that works perfectly for queue-based workflows will break your event streaming orchestration.
A Practical Approach to Scalable, Multi-Column, Multi-Sort Searching in Large Applications for Any Laravel Model
This article outlines how I solved that problem by designing a generic, reusable search engine that works for any Laravel model, supports nested relationships, dynamic sorting, pagination, and optional caching — all from a single service.
The Shortcut Syndrome: Symfony, AI, and the Decline of Real Craft
Man, everyone’s doing Symfony these days. But I still remember back in 2013 — it felt like an elite circle. You really had to earn your stripes: deep PHP, solid OOP, algorithms, design patterns, system architecture, testing, and understanding all the constraints of building real applications.
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Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
webino/zend-rbac
Zend Framework module that provides a layer of features for Zend\Permissions\Rbac.
vhchung/slim3-skeleton-mvc
Simple Slim Framework 3 skeleton with Twig, Monolog, Doctrine.
tholabs/creator
Creator is a simple PHP dependency injection that works with typehints.
oguzcandemircan/laravel-unique-sluggable
This package allows you to create unique slugs. It keeps all the slugs you define in the slugs table.
jakubszczesniak/eloquent-state-machine-workflow-pro
State machines for your Laravel Eloquent models.
razziel/performance-counter
A development tool for monitoring application performance and debugging bottlenecks.
middlewares/recaptcha
Middleware to use Google reCAPTCHA for spam prevention.
rocket-internet/money-value-object
Value Object that represents a monetary value (using a currency's smallest unit).
jalendport/craft-lockout
Temporarily lock certain users out of the control panel.
graham-campbell/manager
Manager Provides Some Manager Functionality For Laravel.
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