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Happy Birthday, PHP

June 2025

It’s June, and here at PHP Architect Magazine, we’re celebrating something truly monumental, the 30th birthday of the PHP programming language. I’ve found myself wondering where the internet, businesses, technology, and even myself would be today had it not been for PHP. Thirty years is a true testament to PHP’s enduring power and adaptability. We all know the story, it began as Rasmus Lerdorf’s personal toolset in 1995, but PHP evolved rapidly into the internet’s heartbeat, powering heavyweights like Facebook, Wikipedia, Drupal, WordPress, and so many more.

Just the Facts

By Edward Barnard

Data warehousing principles solve real business problems. In this final installment of our drill-across series, we explore how fact tables, dimension tables, and aggregation tables transform complex reporting challenges into manageable solutions. Moving beyond operational database limitations, we demonstrate how Ralph Kimball’s dimensional modeling approach creates scalable, maintainable reporting systems that support agile development practices. We focus on the conceptual foundations that make drill-across queries possible, revealing how seemingly tedious implementation details actually embody powerful principles that free developers from repetitive query optimization while ensuring consistent, reliable results across disparate data sources. by Edward Barnard

SCA with SARB and PHP Language Extensions

By Scott Keck-Warren

One piece of the software development testing process that I’ve started using to (maybe) an extreme over the last couple of years is the use of static code analysis tools. They’ve become a go-to part of my everyday development process, and I’m always looking for ways to add “more power” to the suite of tools I use. I always want to scream from the rooftops when I find something new, which is exactly what I’m going to do in this article. by Scott Keck-Warren

Vibe Coding is the Future

By Chris Tankersley

You know what is just wonderful: Working in a profession where I am constantly being told I will be phased out by a computer. A computer, the very thing that is my livelihood as a programmer, will be smart enough to program itself based on words described to it by another human. My job will not exist in ten years. by Chris Tankersley

So You Don’t Want To Be A Manager…

By Chris Hartjes

Hello friends! In this column I want to talk to you about an existential threat a lot of developers have to confront at some point in their careers — do you want to manage people or do you want to remain a coder? by Chris Hartjes

The Evolution of PHP Development: From Spaghetti Code to Structured Frameworks

By Christopher Miller

In the early days of PHP development, the language was often used in a procedural, unstructured manner, leading to what is commonly referred to as “spaghetti code.” This wasn’t a malicious creation; rather, it stemmed from the relatively nascent state of the language and the often-limited tooling and understanding available to developers. by Christopher Miller

Expanding Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange to Elliptic Curves

By Eric Mann

Last month, we explored the fundamentals of traditional Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (DHKE) using modular exponentiation. Building on that approach, we’ll now look at a more modern variant: Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH). The core concept remains the same: two parties generating a shared secret without transmitting it – the underlying math shifts from modular arithmetic to operations on elliptic curves. by Eric Mann

Caching with the Venerable APCu Extension

By Oscar Merida

Last month, we used the BetterReflection package to dynamically register routes and set up API clients. It provides some convenient methods and a readable API for introspecting a codebase. With it, we removed a bunch of repetitive configuration code. The package cautions that using it incurs a performance hit. Let’s look at how we can cache the results so that our application runs efficiently. by Oscar Merida

Data Transfer Objects and Property Hooks

By Sergii Pryz

Property Hooks, introduced last year in PHP 8.4, have triggered wide interest and discussion within the PHP community. It’s quite common with a new feature that discourse touches only basic functionalities when real-life scenarios need to wait for release, and even then, it will take time to find the feature in the right place. This article focuses on property hooks application using Data Transfer Objects (DTO), with SplFixedArray as a central data storage. by Sergii Pryz

Observability Foundations: Why Logs Matter for PHP Applications

By Florian Engelhardt

This logging-focused article is the second part in our series on observability. Previously, we explored how metrics enable real-time visibility into an application’s performance. Now, we turn to logs to illuminate what happens under the hood—from configuration warnings to new user signups. by Florian Engelhardt

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