Mastering Modern PHP: Performance, AI, and the Pipe Operator
From the new pipe operator in PHP 8.5 to a critical Livewire vulnerability, plus tips on scaling Laravel and modernizing your code.
As we head into the last week of July, things are anything but slow in the PHP world. It reminds me of a summer a few years back at the fintech I was with. We were seeing a seasonal dip in transactions, which gave us the perfect window to tackle some long-standing performance bottlenecks. One of our senior engineers found a simple change that cut our memory usage in half, a real ‘aha!’ moment. It’s a great reminder that even small tweaks can have a massive impact.
This week’s issue is packed with similar game-changing insights. We’ve got a fascinating read on how one team reduced their PHP-FPM memory utilization by over 80% without a single code change. There’s also a great piece on ‘Laravel at Scale,’ offering proven hacks to query millions of records in seconds. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to immediately refactor your own projects.
Beyond performance, get a first look at the new pipe operator coming in PHP 8.5—it’s going to make your code so much cleaner. And on a critical note, please check out the Livewire security vulnerability notice. If you’re using Livewire, it’s essential to ensure you’re patched and protected. Let’s dive in!
PHP
📚 PHP 8.5 Pipe Operator: Simplify Your Workflow
With PHP 8.5, a powerful new tool lands in your toolbox: the pipe operator (|>). It lets you chain operations cleanly, without nested calls or extra variables.
📚 Fix These 20 Common PHP Errors Using AI Tools
These tools help you review code quality and streamline the process of identifying errors, suggesting fixes, and maintaining high standards for your source code.
📚 Static vs Non-Static Closures in PHP – A Surprising Benchmark
This blog post tells the story of what I found – and why using static might be a small habit that makes a big difference.
📚 How to use php with base path with nginx.
When the main php project BB is nested inside php project AA, with php extension removed from url.
📚 Building Custom Artisan Commands with Advanced Features
Key Takeaways: Progress Bars: Basic, advanced formatting, multiple progress bars with real-time updates.
📚 PHP 8.5.0 Alpha 2 available for testing
The PHP team is pleased to announce the second testing release of PHP 8.5.0, Alpha 2. This continues the PHP 8.5 release cycle, the rough outline of which is specified in the PHP Wiki.
📚 CakeFest tickets available NOW!
Use code: CakePHPX for discounted early pricing. Ready to book your stay? Crowne Plaza is offering a discounted rate for attendees.
📚 Stop Writing PHP Like It’s 2010. These 10 Principles Are Non-Negotiable
Let’s be direct. If you’re still manually configuring Nginx, wrestling with Docker Compose files, or fighting with local SSL certificates every time you start a new project, you’re wasting your most valuable asset: time.
So, once upon a time, while i was busy doing a big task “CI/CD Revision” I experienced something strange in the middle of one of its sub-tasks.
📚 Transforming PHP Codebases Using the Proxy Pattern
Clean Up and Optimize Your PHP Projects with the Proxy Pattern.
📚 Understanding the LAMP Stack
If you’ve ever dipped your toes into web development, chances are you’ve come across the LAMP stack.
📚 DDD for backend developers: why is it so hard to get started
In this article, I’ll break down why DDD feels intimidating at first, how it differs from what we usually do in PHP, and how to gradually adopt it without rewriting everything or becoming an architecture astronaut.
📚 PHP 8.5 Pipe Operator: Simplify Your Workflow
With PHP 8.5, a powerful new tool lands in your toolbox: the pipe operator (|>). It lets you chain operations cleanly, without nested calls or extra variables.
Laravel
📚 Laravel at Scale: 5 Proven Hacks to Query Millions of Records in Seconds
The Problem: SELECT * is the biggest culprit—wasting CPU, RAM, and bandwidth when you only need a handful of columns. The Fix: Always explicitly select only what you need.
📚 Laravel Events and Listeners: Building Decoupled Applications
In traditional application development, components often directly depend on each other, creating tight coupling that leads to code that’s difficult to maintain, test, and extend.
📚 The July 2025 Laravel Worldwide Meetup is Today
The next Laravel Worldwide Meetup is today, Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025. The meetup starts on YouTube at 16:00 UTC and features Harris Raftopoulos.
📚 5 Useful VS Code Extensions for PHP Development
Whether you’re building a simple website or a complex Laravel application, the right extensions can make coding faster, cleaner, and more enjoyable.
📚 Streamlined Data Flow Between Laravel Seeders Using Context
Database seeders frequently require shared data between classes, but conventional approaches create maintenance challenges and unclear dependencies. Laravel’s Context system provides an elegant solution for managing seeder data flow.
📚 Deploying Laravel Applications on Laravel Cloud With MongoDB Atlas
Hosting a website or an application has always been a pain in the past. However, things got easier with time, and today, it has become seamless using Laravel Cloud.
📚 Building Comprehensive Test Suites with Pest PHP: From Validation to Authorization
Testing is the cornerstone of reliable software development. In this article, I’ll walk you through building a comprehensive test suite for a Laravel application using Pest PHP.
📚 Using Blade Templates in Laravel - A Beginner’s Guide
In this article, I’ll walk you through the basics of Blade templates with real-world examples.
📚 How to Transfer Data from PHP Form to Database in Laravel – Easy Steps for Beginners
In this tutorial, I’ll guide you through simple, beginner-friendly steps — from creating the form to saving the data using Laravel’s built-in features.
📚 How to Enable the “Remember Me” Feature in Laravel
In this article, you’ll learn how to enable the “Remember Me” option in Laravel, so your users can stay logged in even after closing their browser.
📚 Livewire Security Vulnerability
As reported in CVE-2025-54068, anyone running Livewire before 3.6.3 is vulnerable to remote command execution during component property update hydration. Here is how it’s explained in the CVE.
Laravel Live Denmark is back with its second edition of the conference, to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21-22. August 2025.
📚 PHP Performance: Profiling and Optimization Techniques
I learned about performance profiling during the most stressful week of my career. Our Laravel application was processing orders for a major sale event, and at 2 PM on launch day, everything ground to a halt.
📚 8 Laravel Secrets for a Secure, High-Performance API
Today, I’m sharing the 8 most powerful Laravel “secrets” I now consider non-negotiable in every backend I build. These tips are not just theory — they’re battle-tested in production.
Symfony
Symfony AI is a set of components that integrate AI capabilities into PHP applications. This package comprises several lower- and higher-level components, along with their respective integration bundles.
📚 July 14–20, 2025: A Week of Symfony #968
This week, the upcoming Symfony 7.4 version improved the Serializer component by adding more prefix support to the accessor, added more code to make the JsonPath component RFC compliant, and added support for loading JSON using imports in AssetMapper.