Colin O'Dell has posted a guide that you can follow to help you test your applications with the latest version of the PHP 7.2 pre-releases using a simple Docker setup.

PHP 7.2 is slated for release in November 2017, but you don't have to wait until then to start testing your applications! We can easily use Docker to test against the latest pre-release versions of 7.2.

He's even created a Docker image that's posted on DockerHub to make the process even simpler. He shows how to reference specific types (php-fpm, apache, etc) and specific tags for the PHP pre-releases on each. He encourages you to log bugs in the PHP if found and report issues to him if there's a problem with the Docker setup. He also mentions that, since the mcrypt extension was removed by default from PHP 7.2, you'll need some special commands to get it set up and working (via a PECL install).

In this new post to his site Freek Van der Herten shares some of the things he learned from reading the book "Laravel: Up and Running", helping you to get a Laravel application up, running and understood easily.

Matt Stauffer is currently putting the final touches on his new book called Laravel: Up And Running. It aims to be a good guide for newcomers to the framework. But even if you’ve got some experience with Laravel, it should be worth your time to read it. Even Matt himself picked up a lot of cool stuff while writing it.

During my holiday I read an advance copy of the book containing all chapters expect the ones that touch on Laravel 5.3 specific functionality. I can say that it is very well written and it complements the official documentation well. Here are some of the things I’ve learned from reading this book.

His list of "lessons learned" includes topics like:

• Sending a download response
• Sharing a variable with all Blade views
• Using closure based commands
• Eager load the number of related records

Each one comes with a bit of code, mostly just one line (as that's all it takes) but it's interesting to see some of these handy tips and tricks to make it easier to work with the Laravel framework in your applications.

Andi Gutmans mentions a program Adobe is starting up concerning Flex and PHP and they're looking for some developers to get in on it.

In this upcoming version [of Flex Builder], a significant new set of features are being introduced to accelerate creation of data-centric applications with PHP on the server-side leveraging Zend Framework and Zend AMF. Prior to the public Beta later in the year, Adobe would like to invite a select group of PHP developers into a private pre-release program for Flex Builder.

The group would get a sneak peek at the upcoming features, work with the development team and help to make the product into something the community really can use. If you'd like to get in on the program, fill out this survey and they'll get in touch with you with more information.