Freek.dev

Laravel / PHP / AI

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Why objects (usually) use less memory than arrays in PHP

Because the properties for the object are predefined PHP no longer has to store the data in a hashtable, but instead can say that `$foo` is property 0, `$bar` is property 1, `$baz` is property 2 and then just store the properties in a three-element C array.

This means that PHP only needs one hashtable in the class that does the property-name to offset mapping and uses a memory-efficient C-array in the individual objects. Arrays on the other hand need the hashtable for every array.

https://gist.github.com/nikic/5015323

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HTTP based image manipulations

Glide is a wonderfully easy on-demand image manipulation library written in PHP. It’s straightforward API is exposed via HTTP, similar to cloud image processing services like Imgix and Cloudinary. Glide leverages powerful libraries like Intervention Image (for image handling and manipulation) and Flysystem (for file system abstraction).
http://glide.thephpleague.com/

It comes with the ability to secure image URL's using a private signing key. I'm a bit worried about flooding the server but the owner of the package states that

... the cache filesystem + caching in league/flystem (with Redis/Memcache) should (at least this is the case in my testing) result in a speedy response...
There's also a risk that over time your cache will become gigantic. The maintainers of the package are already discussing possible solutions.

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Automating Laravel deployments using Capistrano

Capistrano is a server automation and deployment tool. It makes a whole bunch of servers simultaneously perform actions. This could be deploying our application, or clearing their cache.

Capistrano tells each of our servers to pull the latest branch from Git, perform any necessary build steps, and deploy the application on itself. Setting up this process is what we'll be detailing.

https://www.airpair.com/laravel/posts/automating-laravel-deployments-using-capistrano

If you want to use something simpler, take a look at Deployer.

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PHPCI: a CI tool specifically designed for PHP

PHPCI is a free and open source continuous integration tool specifically designed for PHP. Built with simplicity in mind and featuring integrations with all of your favourite testing tools, we've created the very best platform for testing your PHP projects.
https://www.phptesting.org/

Over at Sitepoint Peter Nijssen wrote a good overview of the offered functionality.

I've been playing around with the self-hosted version. It comes with a bunch of plugins that are installed by default.

I can recommended it if you, like me, are starting out with CI.

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Get up and running with Event sourcing

Event Sourcing is a concept you'll start to hear more and more in the development community. Yet, there's no real aggregate of different talks or just resources in general available. Everything is spread out. Getting started with Event Sourcing isn't the easiest thing to do.

This post has as goal to regroup as much information as possible about event sourcing. This will include links to conference talks, slideshows, github repositories, blog posts, and so on.

http://nicolaswidart.com/blog/get-up-and-running-with-event-sourcing

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Easy deployments for php projects

Let's talk a bit about deployments.

All the new projects I work on are hosted on servers that are provisioned by Forge. Forge has a quick deploy feature that allows you to pull the lastest master-commit onto the server, install composer dependencies, run migrations and so on.

It has two main drawbacks:

  • you can't see any output of the deployment script in your terminal
  • you can't do some stuff locally on your computer
To solve these points I'm switching from Forge's quick deploy feature to Deployer.
Deployer is a deployment tool written in PHP, it's simple and functional. Deploy your code to all servers you want, it supports deploy via copy, or via VCS (like git), or via rsync. Run your tasks on all your servers, or use our recipes of common tasks for Symfony, Laravel, Zend Framework and Yii.
You can install Deployer via composer. To use Deployer a deploy.php file must be added to your project. This file describes your deployment process. No worries, you can write it in php using a very clean and readable syntax. The documention on how to write the deploy.php-file is a bit vague at this point, but you'll get a good idea of how things work by taking a look at my deploy.php-file.

To run deployer you'll use this command:

[code lang="bash"] dep 



I've made a bash alias that uses the name of the git branch you're currently on:

[code lang="bash"]
alias deploy='dep deploy $(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD)'

Now deploying a branch is as easy as just typing "deploy" when standing on a git repo in your terminal. This is a much nicer way to handle deployments. What I really like is that, now a deploy.php stored in the git repo, the deployment process is also versioned.

If you find Deployer doesn't meet your needs, Rocketeer, Phing and Capistrano are some more advanced alternatives. Envoy is nice too, but I haven't found a way to run stuff locally.

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