Hi everyone,
We have the latest news and updates here on PHPWeekly. In this week's newsletter, we have articles on Key Takeaways From PHPverse 2026, PHP Attributes, and What's New in Laravel 13.15. In Podcasts we have new episodes from No Compromises and this week they discuss why giving AI agents access to your production environment is as reckless as the bad old days of FTPing code straight to your server. North Meets South chat about how a Laravel Cloud weekend challenge inspired Michael to build Fitrack, while Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell, creator and CEO of Laravel, on the Laravel Podcast. Finally in our Reading section, we have articles on Magento 2 Custom Product Options Performance, Constant Scalar Expressions In PHP, and The Foundations and Bricks of the Web World.
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
Key Takeaways From PHPverse 2026
Our goal was to give a stage to voices from different parts of the PHP ecosystem. And despite the diversity of perspectives, the main challenges and action points across the talks were the same: living with AI agents, countering new security threats, encouraging contributions and community involvement, and building on the foundation of modern PHP.
PHP version stats: July, 2026
Welcome back to another blog post about PHP's version usage across the community. You can read the previous edition here, but as always I'll include historic data in this post as well.
PHP Attributes: What, Why, How and When
Most applications start with a few simple decisions living in ordinary code. A controller calls a service. A command has a signature. A model has a scope. A webhook event maps to a handler.
New in PHP 8.6: Faster array_map with first-class callables
In this video, I explain a new engine-level optimization coming to PHP 8.6 that narrows the performance gap between `array_map()` and `foreach`. You'll learn how the optimization works under the hood, why `foreach` has traditionally been faster, what motivated this change, and what it means for your own PHP applications.
What's New in Laravel 13.15: Typed Translations and More
Most point releases are safe to skim. Laravel 13.15 has one change that's a reason to update today, not eventually, so it's worth two minutes even if you skip the rest.
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Tutorials and Talks
How to scrape google search results with php in 2026
In 2026, scraping Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) requires a highly resilient architecture that can bypass aggressive anti-bot protections, manage system memory efficiently, and handle dynamic JavaScript execution.
Building AI Agents in PHP: Tool Calling with Laravel
The chatbot from earlier in this series can answer questions, but ask it "how many orders did we ship yesterday?" and it will confidently make something up. It has no hands — it can't query your database, call your services, or do anything except generate text.
How to Audit a Laravel Script Before Buying Its Source Code
Buying a ready-made Laravel application can save weeks or even months of development. A billing system, booking platform, CRM, marketplace, admin dashboard, or SaaS starter kit may already include most of the functionality you need.
How to Take a Website Screenshot in PHP (Browsershot and the API Alternative)
PHP has no built-in way to render a web page, so the moment you search for "php screenshot website" you hit a fork: install a headless browser stack and drive it from PHP, or skip the browser and call a hosted API over HTTP. This guide covers both honestly, with working code and the gotcha each one hits. First, a trap to clear out of the way.
Building CSRF Double-Submit Cookie Protection for a PHP Video Admin Panel
Last month I watched a bulk-delete endpoint on our video admin panel get hit by a forged POST during a routine log review. Nothing was lost — the request failed a token check — but the log line was enough to make me audit every state-changing route we ship.
A complete Laravel API with clean architecture in 30 seconds, tests included
I counted the files I create every time I add a resource to a Laravel API. Model, migration, controller, a form request, a resource, a factory, a seeder, a policy. If the project cares about architecture, add a DTO and a service class. Then the tests. |
News and Announcements
Quarterly Progress Report - Q2 2026
Our team of core developers works very hard to strengthen and improve the PHP language. In an effort to improve the way we communicate this work, from now on, we will be posting quarterly updates regarding their individual projects and efforts.
PhpStorm 2026.2 is Now Out
Welcome to the PhpStorm 2026.2 release overview. This version advances PhpStorm as a platform for your preferred coding agents, models, and AI subscriptions, improves PHP and Laravel support, and delivers productivity gains for working with Git repositories, databases, and the built-in terminal.
First-Party Image Processing in Laravel 13.20
Laravel 13.20.0 adds first-party image processing to the framework, with an immutable, driver-based API for transforming images that come from uploads, storage, URLs, or raw bytes. The release also brings a WithoutMiddleware controller attribute, a dedicated session prefix for Redis, and a batch of Eloquent and queue additions.
PHP 8.6.0 Alpha 2 available for testing
The PHP team is pleased to announce the second testing release of PHP 8.6.0, Alpha 2. This continues the PHP 8.6 release cycle, the rough outline of which is specified in the PHP Wiki.
July 13–19, 2026 - A Week of Symfony #1020
This week, Symfony published Symfony UX 3.3, which adds support for Symfony Reprise and includes several improvements to the toolkit. In addition, SymfonyCasts announced a new course on upgrading to Symfony 8. Finally, the upcoming SymfonyCon Warsaw 2026 conference announced its first four speakers.
Symfony UX 3.3.0 released
Symfony UX 3.3.0 is out. This release brings first-class support for Symfony Reprise in StimulusBundle, two new Shadcn components for the Toolkit (Sonner and Combobox), and a batch of quality-of-life improvements to the ux:install command and to how component documentation is parsed and linted.
This Week In PHP Internals | July 15, 2026
A brand-new class extension proposal rewrote itself mid-thread, the Deprecations RFC froze with ballots set for July 27, function autoloading split off a prerequisite RFC overnight, Duration picked up its first declared no on the eve of its vote, and a JSX-flavored markup RFC landed hours before recording.
Scaffold Packages with the `laravel package` Command in Laravel Installer v5.31.0
The Laravel team released Laravel Installer v5.31.0 with a new command to scaffold Laravel packages, environment variable propagation for node-less setups, automated PHP version matching for GitHub Actions, and various compatibility fixes.
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Podcasts and Vlogs
The Stack Overflow: The future of development is full-stack
Live from Snowflake Summit, Ryan talks with Snowflake’s Head of Developer Experience Umesh Unnikrishnan about the industry-wide shift from “vibe coding” for quick prototypes to agentic engineering for enterprise-ready software, how enterprises can scale governance with guardrails like human-in-the-loop approval and control layers that go beyond the underlying LLM, and why Umesh predicts all developers will become someday become full-stack builders.
No Compromises Podcast: Running AI agents on your production server is the new FTP
In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we discuss why giving AI agents access to your production environment is as reckless as the bad old days of FTPing code straight to your server.
North Meets South Podcast: Wildfires, Fitness Tracking, and CCTV
Michael and Jake catch up ahead of Laracon in Boston, beginning with Michael's increasingly complicated home extension. Jake shares a family trip to Cedar Point, then the conversation moves to how a Laravel Cloud weekend challenge inspired Michael to build Fitrack, a personal app for coordinating training around a single fitness goal.
Software Engineering Radio: SE Radio 729: Garth Mollett on AI Supply Chain Security
Garth Mollet, Senior Principal Product Security Engineer and Technical Advisor for Product Security at Red Hat, joins host Robert Blumen for a discussion of AI supply chain security.
Shoptalk Show: 724: Ask Dan Abramov Anything About AT Proto
If you're like Chris and understand a bit of the tech behind AT Proto but want to understand it at a deeper level, this episode is for you. How does it differ from straight up RSS and Mastodon, where is my identity being stored, how do I create a schema, what can be updated or modified later, is there going to be a PDS revolution, how does Standard.site fit into it all, and what else could we build with AT Proto?
WP Builds: 476 – Amber Hinds on restoring faith in WordPress: hard work, accessibility, and long-term plugin success
The conversation focused on Amber Hinds’ personal journey restoring faith in the WordPress community during challenging times. A key theme was how Amber’s Accessibility Checker plugin has succeeded thanks to her relentless long-term effort, deep expertise in accessibility, and a strategic focus on higher-budget clients.
Laravel Podcast: Taylor Otwell on Why Laravel + AI Pair so Well, and the Future of Programming
In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell, creator and CEO of Laravel, just days before Laracon in Boston, and gets into why Laravel has become such a natural fit for building with AI coding agents.
PHP Architect: The PHP Podcast 2026.07.16
Joe hosts with Sarah and Holly while running on no sleep. The PHP Tech 2027 CFP opens, a fake PHP 9 pitch appears, we crown Holly the accidental main character of internals, and everyone agrees dark mode flashing white is a war crime.
Mostly Technical: 141: The Era of Sol
Ian and Aaron discuss letting Sol Ultra rip for over 2 days straight, Aaron's new side project, problems with macOS, trying to price AI usage in apps, and more.
Syntax: Bun re-written in Rust, Zig team big mad
CJ and Scott break down the biggest week in web dev: TypeScript 7 ships with a 10x-faster native port, Bun gets rewritten in Rust (much to the Zig team's dismay), and Better Auth joins Vercel.
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Magento 2 Custom Product Options Performance: Optimization at Scale
Custom product options are one of those features every Magento store uses, but few optimize. They're deceptively simple — a dropdown for gift wrapping, a text field for engraving, a checkbox for insurance. What could possibly go wrong?
The Foundations and Bricks of the Web World
We often look for successors to legacy technologies, hoping that newer solutions will automatically displace those from the 1970s. Meanwhile, the C language, created by Dennis Ritchie, remains the ultimate foundational system software after more than 50 years, powering almost every server on Earth. Even a strong contender like Rust hasn’t managed to dethrone it.
TypeScript for PHP? YES, that's possible! And it's not what you think...
In the previous parts of this series, we explored how PureScript acts as a quiet rewrite of the Web, offering a territory of mathematical precision above JavaScript, and how its universal polymorphism allows it to target wildly different runtimes like Node.js, Erlang's BEAM, Chez Scheme, etc.
Building a Complex WordPress Platform from Scratch
Building a scalable platform with user accounts, custom dashboards, search functionality, premium memberships, and custom workflows is a completely different challenge.
Constant Scalar Expressions In PHP
Constants are the immovable rocks of a PHP application. Once defined, they never change. Yet, since PHP 5.6, those rocks may be carved with expressions.
Laravel Request Lifecycle
The request begins at public/index.php. This file is the entry point for all incoming requests by your web server (Apache / Nginx) configuration.
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Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries
swow/swow
Coroutine-based multi-platform support engine with a focus on concurrent I/O.
interaction-design-foundation/nova-html-card
A Laravel Nova card to display arbitrary HTML content.
php-parallel-lint/php-var-dump-check
Find forgotten variables dump in PHP source code.
mortexa/laravel-arkitect
Test and enforce architectural rules in your Laravel applications.
tobion/retry
A generic library to retry an operation in case of an error. You can configure the behavior like the exceptions to retry on.
awcodes/filament-table-repeater
A modified version of the Filament Forms Repeater to display it as a table.
patchlevel/event-sourcing
A lightweight but also all-inclusive event sourcing library with a focus on developer experience.
swisnl/phpstan-faker
PHPStan Reflection extension for custom Faker providers.
alleyinteractive/wp-path-dispatch
Simply and easily add a URL which fires an action, triggers a callback, and/or loads a template.
alleyinteractive/wp-fatal-handler
A better fatal error handler for WordPress.
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