On the Laravel News site there's a recent post covering something that was announced at the Laracon US 2017 conference: the Laravel Certification Program.

A licensed Laravel certification platform was announced at Laracon EU this week, and a new landing page is up at The post also lists out some of the topics included in the certification test including framework basics, Blade templating, service use and localization. There's also sections asking about Laravel best practices and more general PHP topics. You can find out more information about the certification and get some answers to questions in their FAQ.

In the latest post to his site Stefan Koopmanschap offers some advice on when to use exceptions and when to avoid them (the result of a recent Twitter discussion).

I recently found myself in a discussion on whether or not exceptions could be used to control program flow in software (specifically in PHP applications). That triggered me to post a tweet:

Exceptions should not be used to control expected application flow. Discuss.... @skoop

This triggered quite a bit of discussion, which gave me a lot of input on this topic. I want to thank everyone who joined that discussion for their input, which was really valuable. In this blogpost I'll do a summary of the different arguments in the discussion, and give my opinion on this.

He goes on to define the term "program flow" and how that relates to the idea of using exceptions to control it. He then talks about naming things, the "intent" of your code and how the right names can make your code clearer and easier to maintain.

Code Climate, the popular static code analysis service, has made an announcement that will definitely help make checking your PHP application for quality and security issues easier - the release of the Code Climate Platform. This platform provides, among other things, a command line tool that you can use to run their analysis rules on your own systems.

Today, we’re thrilled to launch the Code Climate Platform − the first open, extensible platform for all types of static analysis. [...] What does this mean exactly? First, we’re open sourcing our analysis tools, including the engines and algorithms we use to evaluate code. We’re also enabling anyone to write static analysis engines that run on our servers by following a simple specification. [...] Finally, using our new Code Climate CLI, you can now run any Code Climate-compatible static analysis on your laptop – for free.

This is a great step forward to helping ensure the overall quality of your codebase and makes it even easier than having to rely on a fully external service for the results. Plus, with the specification you can write rules and customize the checks according to your application or framework of choice. They have a developer program you can register for to find out more information about that.

ServerGrove has made an announcement on their blog today about an initiative they're starting to help in their own way to improve the PHP training ecosystem across the community - their "PHP Education Initiative".

PHP Training is an integral part of our PHP community and there are a lot of folks providing great training services making the PHP community safer and stronger. ServerGrove has long supported PHP education by sponsoring PHP User Groups and PHP Conferences, but we realised we have overlooked professional trainers. That is why we are pleased to announce our PHP Education Initiative.

Their part in the project is to provide resources (individual VPSes) for each of the individuals involved to give them a solid platform to work from. It's available to students, educator or user group leader involved in a PHP-centric training session. For more information on getting access to this resource, check out the post for contact information and what will be included.

The folks over at Engine Yard have launched a new PHP-related effort to try to do their part to help out PHP user groups all over the world - a new program that aims to provide user groups with support via a direct link with their leaders.

Since Engine Yard was formed, we’ve had a deep commitment to supporting the open source community. [...] What was missing, though, was a more organized way to reach out to PHP User Groups to offer our support. We didn’t really have a consistent way to connect with user group leaders. That’s why we’re starting a PHP User Group Program.

User group leaders that sign up will get a monthly email describing the benefits available to your group, a list of upcoming events or conferences your attendees might be interested in as well as information on getting occasional swag/sponsorship for your group.

We’ll also be highlighting a PHP User Group of the month, which will entail a blog post about your group, a visit from us and some extra special goodies for your members.

If you're a user group leader, you can get involved by signing up here and you'll be notified when you've been added.

Joshua Thijssen has a new post to his blog looking at taking a common unix tool - traceroute - and seeing if he could translate it into PHP where it could be called directly without the need for something like exec.

Today i was reading upon this wonderful article about writing a trace-route program in Python in 40 lines. Even though trace-route is one of the many tools i use on day to day basis, i never really got into writing a version myself (something I like to do just to gain knowledge how things works). So when I was reading this post, i thought, Python is nice, but is it possible to do it in PHP as well? The answer to that: yes and no..

His post introduces you to "traceroute" (including a bit on how it works) in case you're either not a unix user or haven't gone much past some of the basics of the operating system type. One issues he butted up against was problems with the socket extension in PHP and inconsistencies with the underlying connection types. Another is the limitation of the tool only working as the root superuser. He includes the actual code and some sample output if you'd like to try it for yourself.

Zend recently introduced an affiliate program targeted at local user groups all around the world to allow them to get discounts on Zend products and services. Unfortunately, the program has met with some mixed reviews and Giorgio Sironi touches on just a few.

The program is intended to benefit all the parties involved; primarily, Zend gets a showcase for its products in an environment of dedicated PHP programmers like the ones in PHP user groups. In exchange, the group members obtain a discount on their purchases via a group-specific coupon code.

Some user groups are seeing it as a good thing, a way to provide the things Zend has to offer (software, training...anything on the Zend store really) for a discounted price. Others, however, see it has an unwelcome way Zend has tried to worm their way into local groups.

According to a new post to their blog, the PHPWomen group has announced a partnership program for projects that want to put out a message of encouraging diversity in contributors:

As quoted from the information page about the partnerships:

PHPWomen has launched a partnership program for open source projects that are committed to embracing diversity and providing a welcoming and friendly atmosphere for contributors. We work closely with project leaders to identify specific areas of need, and will actively encourage our members to participate by promoting those needs through various channels. In return, the project leaders will ensure that newcomers to their projects will be welcomed and their contributions appreciated. This includes fostering an open and friendly environment for all newcomers, not just females.

The goal of the project is to encourage inviting environments for open source projects where developers feel like they're given a chance to contribute equally and to provide something more specific than "here's a project that needs help - go for it".

There's already several projects that are on the list including Spaz and the PHP Documentation team. You can find out more specifics on what they're looking for in contributions on the Opportunities page.

If you haven't heard about the Charter Tickets available for this year's TekX conference you only have a little bit of time to pick one up yourself - until January 6th! If you want to find out a bit more about why these special tickets were offered, check out this new post to Marco Tabini's blog (of php|architect) with some of their thoughts.

It pos­si­ble to pur­chase a full - ex­pe­ri­ence TEK·X tick­et—valid for both the main con­fer­ence and tu­to­ri­al day - for $650. The catch (if you want to call it that) is that the spe­cial is only valid until we an­nounce the sched­ule. [...] The rea­son­ing be­hing the Char­ter Pro­gram is very sim­ple: we rec­og­nize that there is a core of at­ten­dees for whom our con­fer­ences have be­come an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet up with their peers and learn what’s hap­pen­ing in the PHP world.

This Charter Program was created just for those people, the ones that are there regardless of what the conference itself has to offer but are confident that they'll be in for a good even no matter what. For them it's not just about the sessions, it's about the people they'll meet and friends they'll see again.

DevShed has posted the second part of their series looking at an IP-to-Country mapping application, this time with a focus on building some simple applications to use the data inside.

Building a web site that will be seated on a multi-lingual platform often requires developing an IP-to-country application that permits you to map users' IP addresses to their corresponding countries. [...] This database contains over 82,0000 records and allows you to map more than 3,200,000 IP addresses to their respective countries. This can be really handy for developing different IP-to-country applications with minor efforts.

The review the previous article on making the database and move ahead to create a script that selects - based off the IP range - the country that address could be from.