Here are some very exciting news from the WordPress fronts: WordPress 5 will feature the built-in Gutenberg project. Gutenberg is a complete rebuilt of the WordPress administration and content publishing experience, with much faster and cleaner user interface and a whole array of new features, such as “page builder” functionality.
Here are a couple of links with more information on how to get yourself ready in time:
“Unit Testing – The Big Picture” is a super useful for those of us who need a refresher or an overview of what software testing is in general, and how unit testing relates to other types of testing in particular. It covers a bit of history of testing, different approaches, terminology, and more.
“Code quality tools in PHP to check and improve your code” is a list of both some very well known tools and some new kids on the block. The article covers the following:
Everybody building a web application with a modern framework, is already probably using an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping). Most frameworks include one out of the box. But digging deeper into the subject, ORMs do vary from each other, and some cases, very significantly.
Most variations are coming from two main approaches: Active Record and Data Mapper. I’ve heard the terms for a long time, but today decided to look into the meaning and the actual difference.
The two approaches seem very similar. The difference is described in a multitude of articles online. I particularly liked this one. In essence, Active Record is a better choice for simpler, CRUD-based applications. Data Mapper, on the other hand, is better for domain-specific applications, as it provides another level of abstraction between the domain objects and the persistence layer.
Most of my work these days is done with CakePHP framework, which I now thought uses the Active Record pattern. But it turns out that CakePHP ORM so powerful, because it’s more than just one of those:
The CakePHP ORM borrows ideas and concepts from both ActiveRecord and Datamapper patterns. It aims to create a hybrid implementation that combines aspects of both patterns to create a fast, simple to use ORM.
It looks like I need to do some learning and dig deeper into the subject. Pointers are welcome.
Here are a couple of new tools in addition to previously mentioned PHPStan: