If you’re building web apps with PHP, you are almost certainly using a relational database, even if you call it “MySQL” or “Postgres” and rarely think about the theory behind it. Relational databases can be one of the unseen workhorses of our technology stack, but understanding them to a greater degree will improve your […]

     As developers in the year 2025, keeping our systems and applications secure is of the utmost importance. One of the most common ways that attackers can make our applications less secure is by using a class of vulnerability called Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). XSS allows an attacker to inject malicious client-side scripts into […]

 One of the more challenging parts of coding is making sure we’re constantly refactoring our code to make it easier to maintain. It’s also a pain to try and keep up with all of the deprecated features in PHP, and major upgrades can be a major headache. But what if there was a tool […]

Recently, I dove headfirst into adding real-time audio transcription to a FreeSWITCH-based system. The idea was simple: capture the audio from a live phone call and feed it to AssemblyAI’s real-time transcription API. The reality? Not quite so simple. Getting Started I used Claude to help kickstart the effort. Within an hour, I had a […]

It’s 2 AM, you’re three coffees deep, and you just pushed what you’re convinced is the cleanest code you’ve ever written. Your tests are green, your commit message is poetry, and you’re feeling like the PHP wizard you always knew you could be. Then PHPStan speaks up. “Hey,” it says gently, “I noticed you’re returning […]

 It all started with a simple annoyance. I was working on a Laravel project and kept having to run the same set of commands in a tinker session to setup a test subscriber in a specific state. Every time I would need to copy and paste a bunch of commands into tinker to get […]

Picture this: You’re responsible for a piece of software that powers nearly three-quarters of all websites on the internet. Every day, billions of people interact with applications built on your platform. The responsibility is staggering – and so is the target on your back. This was the reality facing The PHP Foundation in 2024 when […]

Introduction While certainly not a new concept, Queues have become a powerful and handy feature of modern frameworks. They enable our normally thread-locked apps to asynchronously dispatch tasks, allowing workflows and, especially, users to continue forward. Expectations are high for websites to deliver fast and get content on the page to maintain a good user […]

Picture this: You’re three months into a new Laravel project, the kind where deadlines loom large and stakeholders change their minds faster than you can push commits. Your frontend developer – let’s call her Sarah – walks over to your desk with that familiar look of barely contained frustration. “What exactly does the Update User […]

Picture this: you’re at your desk, coffee growing cold, staring at a legacy codebase that feels like it was written during the Jurassic period. The tests are brittle, the UI updates require a degree in JavaScript archaeology, the CSS is a maze of !important declarations, and the admin panel… well, let’s just say it makes […]