On the Laravel News site they've shown a spotlight on a new feature that's coming with the next major release of the PHP language (v7.3): outer array functions.

PHP 7.3 introduces two new array functions for working with the “outer” keys of an array. The RFC proposal included four new functions for both keys and values, but only the array key functions were accepted: array_key_first() and array_key_last().

[...] Although the outer array value functions were declined, at least new functions will be available for getting the outer keys of an array.

They then provide some code examples of this new functionality, showing how use these new functions to extract values. It also includes examples of the two functions - array_value_first and array_value_last - that were rejected from the RFC when voting happened.

On the SitePoint PHP blog Zach Wallace shares more database wisdom with his readers introducing three more JOINs you should know in your development work.

There are many ways to JOIN data from two database tables and filter the information you require. Craig Buckler wrote a popular piece on understanding JOINs; namely INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, and FULL OUTER. This article is an extension of that one.

He starts with the data he'll be working with: customers and books, linked by a book_id column. He then quickly reviews some of the joins already discussed in the previous article (LEFT, RIGHT, OUTER, INNER) before getting into the newer, more powerful types:

• LEFT JOIN with Exclusion
• RIGHT JOIN with Exclusion
• OUTER JOIN with Exclusions

He finishes the post with a few other thoughts about using WHERE clauses in JOINs, the CROSS JOIN and how the JOINs relate to each other in MySQL.