--- title: Best PHP posts of 2021 | daily.dev description: The most upvoted PHP posts of 2021, curated by the daily.dev community. canonical: https://daily.dev/tags/php/best-of/2021 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:url: https://daily.dev/tags/php/best-of/2021 og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Best PHP posts of 2021 | daily.dev og:description: The most upvoted PHP posts of 2021, curated by the daily.dev community. og:image: https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--VAY5ToZt--/f_auto/v1724209435/public/daily.dev%20-%20open%20graph --- # Best of PHP — 2021 1. 1 [](/posts/announcing-the-php-foundation-u3wd3rtva "Announcing the PHP Foundation") Article Laravel News · 5y Announcing the PHP Foundation JetBrains, Automattic, Laravel, Acquia, Zend, Craft CMS, Private Packagist, Tideways, and PrestaShop are members. Nikita Popov, one of the key contributors, has decided to switch his focus away from PHP to LLVM. The primary task of the Foundation will be to fund developers to work on PHP. 75 2 2. 2 [](/posts/blockman---highlight-nested-code-blocks-hm7vfx1zc "Blockman - Highlight nested code blocks") Article Product Hunt · 5y Blockman - Highlight nested code blocks VSCode extension - Blockman. You can customize block colors, depth, turn on-off focus, curly/square/round brackets, and more.Supports Python, Dart, Rust, Swift, R, Go, PHP, JavaScript, JSX, TypeScript, TSX, C, C#, C++, Java, HTML, CSS and more... 46 4 3. 3 [](/posts/leaf-3---simple-and-elegant-php-6cmet-rla "Leaf 3 - Simple and elegant PHP") Article Product Hunt · 5y Leaf 3 - Simple and elegant PHP Leaf is a slim and lightweight PHP framework for quickly bootstrapping clean, simple but powerful web apps and APIs quickly and easily. Leaf 3 brings more to the table with a theme centring on developer experience and usability. Leaf is available as a free download on GitHub. 42 4. 4 [](/posts/the-new-life-of-php-the-php-foundation-ryovqaat6 "The New Life of PHP – The PHP Foundation") Article JetBrains · 5y The New Life of PHP – The PHP Foundation Nikita Popov is leaving JetBrains as of December 1 and will spend significantly less time on PHP. The PHP Foundation will be a non-profit organization whose mission is to ensure the long life and prosperity of the PHP language. The Foundation’s rules and rules bylaws can be found at: opencollective.com/phpfoundation. 40 5. 5 [](/posts/php-magic-methods-cheatsheet-l6iweezrn "PHP Magic Methods Cheatsheet") Article Tuts+ · 5y PHP Magic Methods Cheatsheet PHP magic methods allow you to perform various operations with objects. The best example of a magic method is the \_\_construct() function, which is called automatically when the object is instantiated. The aim of this article is to go through all the magic methods in PHP and explain each one briefly. 35 6. 6 [](/posts/web-application-development-principles-and-best-practices-pnirqwzk5 "Web Application Development Principles and Best Practices") Article DZone · 5y Web Application Development Principles and Best Practices The process of developing sophisticated web-based software is more like a marathon than a sprint. To avoid potential problems, follow the best practices introduced in this guide. The Twelve-Factor App methodology can be applied to any Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. It covers everything from back-end development on a local machine to cloud architecture. 33 7. 7 [](/posts/php-backend-roadmap-suljjjaw8 "PHP-backend Roadmap") Article DEV · 5y PHP-backend Roadmap There are tons of tools in IT to ease programmers' workflow and make a product more efficient. But in the very beginning of honing PHP that might be such a puzzle to pick the right direction and instruments to learn first. A common solution for such problems now – roadmaps – visual sequences which answer the question "what to learn next?". 31 3 8. 8 [](/posts/php-8-1-is-here-j1nqkzedn "PHP 8.1 is Here") Article Laravel News · 5y PHP 8.1 is Here PHP 8.1 was released on November 25, 2021\. It is the latest version of the popular PHP programming language. There are a number of new features, as well as performance improvements. The migration guide is available at: https://t.co/ToeHc3YGau. 29 9. 9 [](/posts/a-look-at-what-is-coming-to-laravel-9-3q4hncvmd "A look at what is coming to Laravel 9") Article Laravel News · 5y A look at what is coming to Laravel 9 Laravel v9 will be the next LTS version of Laravel, and it will be coming out sometime in early 2022\. Laravel 9 will feature a new Query Builder Interface, and you can see this merged PR for all the details. More new features and announcements will be announced as those get out. 29 2 10. 10 [](/posts/php-has-survived-for-26-years-because-it-keeps-evolving-the-new-stack-x-rfws0ux "PHP Has Survived for 26 Years Because It Keeps Evolving – The New Stack") Article The New Stack · 5y PHP Has Survived for 26 Years Because It Keeps Evolving – The New Stack The company JetBrains announced on its blog the creation of The PHP Foundation. Among the newly announced partners for the new foundation is Automattic, the company behind WordPress. PHP is currently used by 36% of the top 1 million websites — and that figure has been sliding down since around the middle of last year. 22 11. 11 [](/posts/php-php-8-1-0-release-announcement-bo0nblbyd "PHP: PHP 8.1.0 Release Announcement") Article Hacker News · 5y PHP: PHP 8.1.0 Release Announcement 21 12. 12 [](/posts/laravel-octane-brwn9fvrl "Laravel Octane") Article Laravel News · 6y Laravel Octane Laravel Octane is a unified first-party package for running highly performant Laravel utilizing environments like Swoole and RoadRunner. Octane delivered roughly 6,000+ requests per second in some "hello world" examples under a load of \~50 concurrent requests using four concurrent threads. 21 13. 13 [](/posts/top-7-web-development-languages-to-use-in-2022-zzi3hdzxl "Top 7 Web Development Languages To Use In 2022") Article DZone · 5y Top 7 Web Development Languages To Use In 2022 Today, web development is seemingly a promising job. If you are a newcomer in this field, the nuisance here is where to start or which web development languages you should learn. This article from Designveloper will well equip you with fundamental knowledge so that you can choose the right language for future jobs. 19 3 14. 14 [](/posts/getting-started-with-php-in-2022-whkuzpr0q "Getting Started With PHP in 2022") Article Laravel News · 5y Getting Started With PHP in 2022 Mohamed Said has a new video on the the Laravel YouTube channel for those getting started with PHP or wanting a refresher. With PHP 8.1 out on November 25th this month, it's never been a better time to get ready for the new language. Mohamed has been producing a ton of quality video content on the LaraVEL YouTube channel. 19 2 15. 15 [](/posts/top-10-php-8-1-features-you-should-start-using-now-2zuleyae2 "Top 10 PHP 8.1 Features You Should Start Using Now") Article gitconnected · 5y Top 10 PHP 8.1 Features You Should Start Using Now Learn the most amazing features offered by PHP 8.1 update. The most exciting one is the new JIT compiler. New ‘full\_path’ Key in ‘$\_FILES’ for Directory Uploads. ‘fsync()’ and ‘fdatasync’ Functions Array Unpacking Support for String-Keyed Arrays 18 1 16. 16 [](/posts/backend-development-pvbo5wyvm "Backend Development") Article Hashnode · 6y Backend Development Backend development involves writing code that runs on the server. Backend developers take care of the behind the scenes activities that gives the website users an interactive and personalized experience. To become a backend developer, you have to understand the syntax of the language you intend to use and a good knowledge of data structures and algorithms. 18 17. 17 [](/posts/php-8-1-is-two-weeks-away-here-s-what-to-expect-hygvfpah7 "PHP 8.1 is Two Weeks Away, Here's What to Expect") Article Laravel News · 5y PHP 8.1 is Two Weeks Away, Here's What to Expect PHP 8.1 is a minor release with new features focusing on the language's object-oriented design, types, functions, etc. The final Release Candidate (RC6) was announced yesterday. The GA release happens in two weeks on Thursday, November 25th. Users are encouraged to test projects but don't run this version in production quite yet. 16 18. 18 [](/posts/deepdark-material-theme-a-clean-and-dark-material-theme-icon-package-for-vs-code-mxrfxklcq "Deepdark Material Theme — A clean and dark material theme + icon package for VS Code") Article Product Hunt · 6y Deepdark Material Theme — A clean and dark material theme + icon package for VS Code Deepdark Material is a black on black color theme inspired by Material design colors. The theme has full support for languages like PHP, HTML and JavaScript. Deepdark Material can be downloaded from the following sites: Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and more. 16 2 19. 19 [](/posts/php-692wazrg7 "PHP") Article Geek Culture · 5y PHP Part 2 of a two-part series on how to use PHP. We will discuss functions and some of the built-in functions that PHP provides out of the box. In this section, we will go over the syntax and an example of a function. Next we will talk about some string functions. And then we will discuss some math built- in functions. 15 20. 20 [](/posts/our-top-10-laravel-tutorials-of-2021-hwhg4waoe "Our top 10 Laravel Tutorials of 2021") Article Laravel News · 5y Our top 10 Laravel Tutorials of 2021 Laravel is fast out-of-the-box, but you can make it faster if you optimize your configurations and application code. Find N+1 problems instantly by disabling lazy loading in development. Laravel provides many excellent helper functions that are convenient for working with arrays, file paths, strings, and routes. 13 1 21. 21 [](/posts/how-to-use-yield-and-generators-in-php-j63gdmtkp "How to Use Yield and Generators in PHP") Article Tuts+ · 5y How to Use Yield and Generators in PHP The word yield means produce or generate which is basically what the keyword does in PHP. It generates a value for use outside your function without entirely stopping its execution and returning. It gives you the ability to pause the execution while you do something else with the returned value. The advantage of using generators is low memory usage. 13 22. 22 [](/posts/termwind---it-s-like-tailwind-css-but-for-the-php-cli-apps-etltxjhuy "Termwind - It's like Tailwind CSS, but for the PHP CLI apps") Article Product Hunt · 5y Termwind - It's like Tailwind CSS, but for the PHP CLI apps Termwind allows you to build unique and beautiful PHP command-line applications, using the Tailwind CSS API with an HTML Renderer. In short, it's like Tailwindcss, but for the PHP command line applications. Termwind is free and open source, and can be downloaded from the GitHub site. 12 23. 23 [](/posts/read-a-csv-to-array-in-php-vyo985jbc "Read a CSV to Array in PHP") Article Tuts+ · 5y Read a CSV to Array in PHP In this article, we'll learn how to read and print a simple CSV file. We'll use fopen() and fgetcsv() to read the contents of a CSV file, then we'll convert it into an array using the array\_map() and str\_get CSV() functions. The words found in the file are then looped through and printed into an HTML table. 11 2 24. 24 [](/posts/laravel-8-73-released-4qt4sdhey "Laravel 8.73 Released") Article Laravel News · 5y Laravel 8.73 Released The Laravel team released 8.73 with support for Countable objects in the string pluralizer, allowing closures for determining cache TTL, a lazyByIdDesc() query builder method, and the latest changes in the v8.x branch. You can see the complete list of new features and updates below and the diff between 8.71.0 and 8\. 73.1 on GitHub. 11 25. 25 [](/posts/symfony-vs-laravel-why-symfony-is-better-than-laravel-5wzux9ccm "Symfony vs Laravel: Why Symfony Is Better Than Laravel") Article DZone · 5y Symfony vs Laravel: Why Symfony Is Better Than Laravel Symfony is an open-source framework and is highly modular. Sites and projects developed from Symfony include DailyMotion, Drupal, Spotify among several others. Laravel is also anOpen-source network that follows a model-view-controller design pattern. Both use PHP as their programming language. 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