pvm – PHP Process virtual machine for building and executing workflows

At some point last year I wrote the blog post titled “Getting started with workflows in PHP“.  I received quite a bit of feedback about it, but, unfortunately, the priorities at work shifted and I haven’t done much more with workflows since than.

The world, however, hasn’t stopped.  The tools and libraries that existed a year ago are still around and they got a lot better.  Additionally, there are a few new tools that help with workflows, state machines, and the like.

Today I came across a really useful and easy to use tool for building and executing workflows in PHP – pvm, aka PHP Process Virtual Machine.  It’s built and released as Open Source software under MIT license by the excellent guys at Forma-Pro.   If you are still looking for a tool to build and execute workflows, I strongly suggest you give PVM a try.  Given how complex the nature of the problem, this tool is probably the easiest to get started with.

ipstack – IP geolocation and database service

ipstack looks like an excellent IP geolocation service with a beautiful API.  If you haven’t used anything except for the MaxMind GeoIP, give it a try.  Their pricing is quite good, with 10,000 lookups per month going for free.

Gitea – self-hosted Git service

Gitea is yet another alternative to BitBucket, GitHub, and GitLab Cloud.  It’s an open source solution for self-hosting Git repositories.  It’s a fork of Gogs, written in Go, and is available under the MIT license.