This post originally appeared on Symfony Station.

Welcome to this week's Symfony Station Communique. It’s your weekly review of the most valuable and essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities. This week it’s extensive again, so take your time and enjoy its most valuable items.

Thanks to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our last communique in their Week of Symfony.

*Please note all links will open in a new browser window. My opinions, if I present any, will be in bold.

Symfony

This week

As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony.

Highlight -> “This week, Symfony 5.4.0 BETA3 and 6.0.0 BETA3 versions were published so you can test them on your applications before their final release at the end of the month. In addition, the Symfony Core Team added four new members to help grow the Symfony project in the next few years.”

A Week of Symfony #777 (15-21 November 2021)
https://symfony.com/blog/a-week-of-symfony-777-15-21-november-2021

Javier continues a series of posts on what’s new in Symfony 5.4.

New in Symfony 5.4: Dependency Injection Improvements https://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-5-4-dependencyinjection-improvements
New in Symfony 5.4: Messenger Improvements https://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-5-4-messenger-improvements
New in Symfony 5.4: Profiler improvements https://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-5-4-profiler-improvements

Great deals are still available if you are looking for official certification. November 29th is the last day though!

Black Friday 2021 Offers from the Symfony Ecosystem
https://symfony.com/blog/black-friday-2021-offers-from-the-symfony-ecosystem

Symfony added to the official docs with information on Flex Private Recipe Repositories.

How To Configure and Use Flex Private Recipe Repositories
https://symfony.com/doc/current/setup/flex_private_recipes.html

And this one is self-explanatory.

Symfony 6.0.0-RC1 released
https://symfony.com/blog/symfony-6-0-0-rc1-released

Featured Item

We continue to highlight a post of the week.

Please let us know what you think about this one.

It’s not the most important article of the week considering the news about PHP 8.1 and The PHP Foundation. However, it is the first original content created by Symfony Station so it gets the nod for our Featured Item. ;)

Twig - The Ultimate Guide to the Premier PHP Templating Language
https://symfonystation.com/Twig-Ultimate-Guide-PHP-Templating-Language

Speaking of Twig, Prince Sinha shows us how to:
3 Ways to Reuse Twig Templates in Symfony
https://scoutapm.com/blog/3-ways-to-reuse-twig-templates-in-symfony

Via SymfonyCasts: “We've got some logged in users but we don't want them going anywhere they please around our app. The most precise way to protect your site is by denying access from each Symfony controller and we'll cover about 5 good ways to do that!”
This week on SymfonyCasts
https://5hy9x.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/mr/Q5iMMEWQyDhPFyQTXqCh4IZEG9ZzTXdXk0vUI75ZRpMLJaktJ-FWV0YUXqpJF0Phj9uJBdZ56E3nkM32bohWqsbK8wRJKREYMf-eeAHYU88bC5jVrFkhY4WG_spnaW9_fr1XV2a_5g

Here’s an interesting case study involving updating both PHP and Symfony.
Why did Alice's Garden need to set up a Business Intelligence tool?
https://welovedevs.com/fr/articles/pourquoi-alices-garden-a-eu-besoin-de-mettre-en-place-un-outil-de-bi/

Smaine Millani writes: “In this article, I’ll show how you can add validation on a Request content. (It’s more about a way to learn more about Request and event listener than a best practice.)”
What if we define validations rules in the routing configuration
https://smaine-milianni.medium.com/what-if-we-define-validations-rules-in-the-routing-configuration-a15b182e847d

Ahmed Khaled Mohamed shows us how to:

Deploy Sylius to Heroku
https://dev.to/aaahmedaa/deploy-sylius-to-heroku-55p1

Alexandre Daubois tells you to “Brace yourself: autocompletion on options and arguments is finally here!”
Symfony 6 brings its CLI to the next level
https://alex-daubois.medium.com/symfony-6-brings-its-cli-to-the-next-level-9a2531db08cb

Our friends at Jolicode show us how to:

Rate limit your Symfony APIs!
https://jolicode.com/blog/rate-limit-your-symfony-apis

Maks Rafalko demonstrates how to:

Improve Symfony Tests Performance
https://maks-rafalko.github.io/blog/2021-11-21/symfony-tests-performance/

It seems like there is one of these every week. But, I find something useful in each one so we’re sharing.

Laravel vs Symfony – a comparison of the two most popular PHP frameworks
https://davidicke.com/2021/11/23/laravel-vs-symfony-a-comparison-of-the-two-most-popular-php-frameworks/

If you discovered this communique and are new to Symfony, this article is a good introduction.

What is PHP Framework Symfony? Explained for executives
https://medium.com/accesto/what-is-php-framework-symfony-explained-for-executives-accesto-blogwelcome-to-our-72a89abafe71

In French UrbanLinker writes: “In order to help developers and CTOs in their migration to Symfony, SensioLabs has made available a comprehensive migration guide on this subject. From the PHP environment, to the advantages of Symfony via the legacy code, everything is explained to migrate smoothly.”

Migrating your legacy project to Symfony? SensioLabs explains everything.
https://urbanlinker.com/fr/blog/articles-tech-1620983703/migration-de-son-legacy-vers-symfony-sensiolabs-vous-explique-tout

Hurray. An article on YAML was published and it’s a comparison with JSON and XML.

YAML Tutorial: Everything You Need to Know in 5 Mins
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/yaml-tutorial-everything-you-need-to-know-in-5-mins-14f333a23ed1

Timeless

I ran across Akashic Seer’s blog earlier this month, which is loaded with Symfony-related posts. Here are a few more from his archive.

Symfony 5+ how to create a Maker
https://akashicseer.com/web-development/symfony-5-how-to-create-a-maker/

How to quickly create a complete Symfony 5+ app with login and password reset
https://akashicseer.com/web-development/how-to-quickly-create-a-complete-symfony-5-app-with-login-and-password-reset/

PHP

This week

The PhpStorm blog made a big announcement you may have seen elsewhere. I made a contribution for #GivingTuesday and encourage you to do likewise.

The New Life of PHP – The PHP Foundation
https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2021/11/the-php-foundation/
Joe Watkins provides some very interesting details of how the foundation came about and what it requires.
Musings, ninja ones
https://blog.krakjoe.ninja/2021/11/2-1.html

In other big PHP news!
PHP 8.1 is released
https://php.watch/articles/php81-thanks
And here’s the official announcement.
https://www.php.net/releases/8.1/en.php
Finally, if you want to check it out via video, here’s one from JetBrainsTV.

What’s New in PHP 8.1: Enums, First-Class Callables, Fibers, Readonly Properties, and More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgrQSmUiFJQ

Mark Baker notes: “One of the many new features of PHP 8.1 is the ability to declare class constants as final, so that they can no longer be overridden in child classes. The same applies when constants are defined as final in an abstract classes, or interface; they can’t be overridden by classes extending that abstract or implementing that interface. So class and interface constants can now truly become constant.”

Constant Constants. Finally! (On the inconstancy of constants)
https://markbakeruk.net/2021/11/24/constant-constants-finally/

DerEuroMark wonders “if you use open-source software, you might wonder, why all those changes and why you should migrate up to the next major versions.”

Keeping up with framework upgrades
https://www.dereuromark.de/2021/11/22/keeping-up-with-framework-upgrades/

Wouter de Jong writes: “Every now and then, there seems to be a lot of fuss in the PHP community about deprecations. In these discussions, deprecations are often discussed as if they are fatal errors. I think that is very wrong. Let’s reduce our expectations of deprecations. It’ll make everyone’s lives much less stressful.”

Deprecations are not like E_ERROR, E_WARNING, and E_NOTICE
https://wouterj.nl/2021/11/deprecations-are-not-errors

I ran across an impressive looking new book on PHP. If you have seen it before, this edition is updated for version 8.1.

Front Line PHP: Building modern applications with PHP 8.1.
https://front-line-php.com/

Front Line PHP also has a PHP Cheat Sheet.

Modern PHP Cheat Sheet: A to-the-point summary of all awesome PHP features
https://front-line-php.com/cheat-sheet

We shared several posts from Samuel Fontebasso in the last communique. His series on PHP, Nginx, and Docker continues with this one.
PHP+Nginx with Docker in production - Part 3: Docker Compose for your local environment
https://blog.fontebasso.com.br/php-nginx-with-docker-in-production-part-3-d8935b910ba9

Bulletproof PHP writes: “Rather than yet another generic overview of the language or a point-by-point refutation of the things people say is wrong with it, what I want this post to be more than anything else is kind of a comprehensive list of ✨good things about PHP.✨ “

Yes, PHP is Worth Learning/Using in $CURRENT_YEAR
https://bulletproofphp.dev/yes-php-is-worth-using

Along those lines this article from Raft Labs has some great resources for learning PHP.

PHP in 2021? A Big Yes!
https://raftlabs.medium.com/php-in-2021-a-big-yes-a3a6d0be4c01

Behzad Fazelasl says: ”Writing tests is inseparable from programming. If you want to be sure about deploying your code without unexpected failure, writing tests is going to be of assistance. The more tests you write, the more test coverage you get on your code which leads to more confidence.

But there is a big problem. There should be a sort of measurement to make sure enough tests have been written.”
PHPUnit Test Coverage Report
https://engineering.teknasyon.com/phpunit-test-coverage-report-8863563f34bd

Matthew Setter asks why deploy with Docker, especially when there are so many other deployment options?

Deploy PHP Apps with Docker - The Essentials
https://speakerdeck.com/webdevwithmatt/deploy-php-apps-with-docker-the-essentials

Peter Packet didn’t pick any peppers but he did author this interesting post.

Effectively using Facades and Hexagonal Architecture to separate bounded contexts
https://madewithlove.com/blog/software-engineering/effectively-using-facades-and-hexagonal-architecture-to-separate-bounded-contexts/

Here is an article about another PHP Templating language.

EasyTpl — Simple and fastly template engine for PHP
https://medium.com/@inhereat/easytpl-simple-and-fastly-template-engine-for-php-6df123bfc0f8

Last Week

The Voices of the Elephant podcast spoke with Ben Ramsey, the Release Manager for PHP 8.1.
Interview with Ben Ramsey
https://voicesoftheelephpant.com/2021/11/18/ep365-interview-benramsey/

Other

The Guardian asks a simple but extremely important question.

Can big tech ever be reined in?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/21/can-big-tech-ever-be-reined-in

Toptal also has a question. One I’ve asked myself.

Agile, Scrum, and Kanban: What the Heck Do These Words Really Mean?
https://www.toptal.com/project-managers/technical/agile-scrum-kanban-what-do-they-mean

We have shared several posts from Mateusz Cholewka. He continues his series on Docker here.
Read this before you start using the multistage builds for your docker images
https://medium.com/@kontaktmtk3d/read-this-before-you-start-using-the-multistage-builds-for-your-docker-images-a005772b9e61

Here’s a useful tool for anyone who’s making code tutorials.
How to create long screen recordings using OBS Studio
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-create-long-screen-recordings-using-obs-studio/#ftag=RSS56d97e7

Torque Mag has a post on helpful tools as well. Mobile Atom Code and Symfony Station use a variety of these and the list is legit.
28 Best Tools for Freelancers (2021): Keep Your Business on Track
https://torquemag.io/2021/11/best-tools-for-freelancers/

I ran across this on freeCodeCamp and although it’s from February it’s a good resource for working with APIs.

API Cheat Sheet – What is an API, How it Works, and How to Choose the Right API Testing Tools
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-an-api-and-how-to-test-it/

We have been sharing Wouter Carabain’s series on using Symfony and React together. Here’s the latest article.

Setting up React Native (Part 5)
https://woutercarabain.com/webdevelopment/setting-up-react-native-part-5/

ReadWrite wants to predict:

What the Future of Programming Languages Looks Like
https://readwrite.com/2021/11/22/what-the-future-of-programming-languages-looks-like/

DeliciousBrains tells us how to:

Create Your Own SSL Certificate Authority for Local HTTPS Development
https://deliciousbrains.com/ssl-certificate-authority-for-local-https-development/

And CSS-Tricks shows us how to:

Create the perfect commit in git
https://css-tricks.com/creating-the-perfect-commit-in-git/

Have you published or seen something related to Symfony or PHP that we missed? If so, please contact us.
That's it for this week. Thanks for making it to the end of another extended edition. I look forward to sharing next week's Symfony and PHP news with you on Friday.

Please share this post. :) Be sure to join our newsletter list, so you get each week's communique directly in your inbox (a day early). And follow us on Twitter at @symfonfystation.

Happy coding Symfonistas!

Reuben Walker
Founder Symfony Station.

Reuben is also Ringmaster of Mobile Atom Media and its division Mobile Atom Code.