Frank de Jonge has a post to his site sharing some helpful hints around the use of arrays in PHP. In this quick post he covers some of the array "superpowers", list assignments and nested destructuring.

One of the things I like the most about JavaScript, and PHP also to some extent, is how flexible and expressive they CAN be (but not always are). I also believe that JavaScript, PHP, and Python have a number of features that make them a good fit for serving the forefront of the web.

[...] The most versatile type of PHP, to me, is the array. The array can be used to act like many different classic data types. You can use them as a List, a Set (although that requires some specific handling), a HashMap, just to name a few.

He starts with the "superpowers" that arrays gained in PHP 7.1 (the square bracket syntax for destructuring) and some code examples showing it in action. He then moves on to show how this update works for list assignment. He finishes up the list with a look at nested destructuring and referencing values from subarrays with this same square bracket syntax.

On the Stitcher.io blog they've shared a post that makes some suggestions about where a curly brace belongs and how that might differ from situation to situation.

Dedicating a whole blogpost to curly brackets might seem like overkill but I believe it's worth thinking about them. Not just because of one curly bracket, but because there's a bigger message in all this. Thinking about how we read and write code not only improves the quality of that code, it also increases our own and others ease of mind when working with it. It can improve the fluency of your work and free your mind to think about real important stuff.

[...] I wrote about visual code improvements a while back in a previous blogpost about cognitive load. Today I want to focus on that one little, yet very important character in our codebase: the curly bracket. More specifically, we're only going to look at the opening curly bracket, because there's little to no discussion about the closing one.

The post goes on to show several different example situations and where they think the "most correct" placement for the curly brace is. They alos talk about the difference between their use on constructors versus control structures. The main recommendation, however, is to keep things consistent across the codebase.

As mentioned by Ed Finkler, there's a list of signs your PHP needs refactoring from Soledad Penades.

I have had to go through a php application recently which has given me more than one headache and has required me to use all my possible patience. While working with it, I thought This is good material for an article, so that nobody else does the same in the future, and nobody else will need to experience the same displeasure as I have had to.

So here are the signs your PHP application needs a serious refactoring, right now

Included in the list are things like:

• Uses global variables
• Everything's an array
• The neverending switch
• Interface inconsistency

It hits on one of the thing that bugs me too, the problem of "Brackets galore" - so many subarrays that you have to resort to three or more sets of bracketed keys to get to the value you want. It's bad enough trying to follow someone else's code without having to "trace down" an array to figure out which of the values they're talking about.

As mentioned by Ed Finkler, there's a list of signs your PHP needs refactoring from Soledad Penades.

I have had to go through a php application recently which has given me more than one headache and has required me to use all my possible patience. While working with it, I thought This is good material for an article, so that nobody else does the same in the future, and nobody else will need to experience the same displeasure as I have had to.

So here are the signs your PHP application needs a serious refactoring, right now

Included in the list are things like:

• Uses global variables
• Everything's an array
• The neverending switch
• Interface inconsistency

It hits on one of the thing that bugs me too, the problem of "Brackets galore" - so many subarrays that you have to resort to three or more sets of bracketed keys to get to the value you want. It's bad enough trying to follow someone else's code without having to "trace down" an array to figure out which of the values they're talking about.

According to this new post on the Inside Open Source blog from APress, Andi Gutmas has made a for a new syntax to be added to the existing array functionality in PHP.

According to this new post on the Inside Open Source blog from APress, Andi Gutmas has made a for a new syntax to be added to the existing array functionality in PHP.

There's a new tutorial posted on the PHP-GTK Community site today - a quick one showing how to use GtkSourceview to create a simple PHP editor with syntax highlighting.

This widget is nearly usable as a real php-gtk IDE. It extends GtkSourceView widget and internally manages both a text buffer and language object classes.

They provide the code, but not too much in the way of explanation for it. Thankfully, most of it is pretty straight-forward. There are a few things that the script has to manage to make the it work - a text buffer for the data, a viewer (window), and the syntax highlighting component. For the view, there are a few handy functions already built in so you won't have to create them - undos, the syntax highlighting, line numbering, markers, and bracket highlighting.

There's a new tutorial posted on the PHP-GTK Community site today - a quick one showing how to use GtkSourceview to create a simple PHP editor with syntax highlighting.

This widget is nearly usable as a real php-gtk IDE. It extends GtkSourceView widget and internally manages both a text buffer and language object classes.

They provide the code, but not too much in the way of explanation for it. Thankfully, most of it is pretty straight-forward. There are a few things that the script has to manage to make the it work - a text buffer for the data, a viewer (window), and the syntax highlighting component. For the view, there are a few handy functions already built in so you won't have to create them - undos, the syntax highlighting, line numbering, markers, and bracket highlighting.