101–110 of 197 posts
Is PHP still unhelpful when it comes to writing secure code? I remember when escaping SQL input data was "the correct way" to use your mysql database. Parametrization? Nah, just use mysql_escape_string or whatever it was called.
Is PHP still unhelpful when it comes to writing secure code? I remember when escaping SQL input data was "the correct way" to use your mysql database. Parametrization? Nah, just use mysql_escape_string or whatever it was called.
And let's be real - most handwritten SQL code in existence in most languages just builds queries from concatenated strings, even when more secure options exist. A lot of code doesn't even bother to escape anything. That's not a language problem so much as a developer laziness and assumption that "simplicity always equals correctness and frameworks are always wrong" problem.
Is PHP still unhelpful when it comes to writing secure code? I remember when escaping SQL input data was "the correct way" to use your mysql database. Parametrization? Nah, just use mysql_escape_string or whatever it was called.
The pipe operator example omits the typical way you would write this code in any language: simply by introducing temporary variables or by shadowing. The url parse example is not being compared to the builtin parse_url function that is just as easy to use.
The pipe operator is indeed just syntactical sugar (and the article links to another article specifically about it which does cover the case of temporary variables), but with the coming partial function application feature it (in my opinion) will make easier to read/reason chains of code than temporary variables or nested function calls.
PHP's evolution since PHP 5 has been substantial, and I think this is a real problem. As someone who learned the language years ago, the pace of change (generics, attributes, match expressions, typed properties) makes modern codebases genuinely difficult to follow. I suspect this affects many developers who cut their teeth on PHP but haven't kept up. The language has become a different beast, which is a strength for…
Java and C# are a couple other popular languages where the same is also true.
Do people have any recommendations for modern PHP tutorials and learning sources?
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Books:
* PHP & MySQL: Novice to Ninja by Tom Butler
* PHP 8 - Quick Scripting Reference by Mikael Olsson
* PHP 8 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra
* Programming PHP (2020) by Kevin Tatroe and Peter MacIntyre
I personally found them to be really good. I learned a lot from the first book especially.
You can find the code from the first book here: https://github.com/spbooks/phpmysql7
I hope this helps.
PHP's evolution since PHP 5 has been substantial, and I think this is a real problem. As someone who learned the language years ago, the pace of change (generics, attributes, match expressions, typed properties) makes modern codebases genuinely difficult to follow. I suspect this affects many developers who cut their teeth on PHP but haven't kept up. The language has become a different beast, which is a strength for…
PHP has no generics? I read somewhere that is was "too hard" to get right in PHP land, mostly because of how primitive the typesystem is.
I still love PHP. 23 years ago we created some encryption software for it and it is still going. I also run a PHP newsletter. There's still a strong community of people and whilst there are other languages which I also use (Python, Node.js) I still find myself gravitating towards PHP for fast and simple work The only issues I have. is that this is a 'double edged sword' in that PHP has become far more complex since t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am quite sure many people would fail Pub Quizzes related to C, when taking into account the whole language alongside compiler extensions, regardless of the compiler.
To learn all of the common GCC and MSVC extensions would make up a fraction of the language features of C# or Java. You’re really overstating the complexity to make some invalid point. “Actually, one of the most notoriously conservative and simple (in feature set) languages is really super complex and has evolved a ton because it has _Generic and varargs now, and __packed__ exists as a compiler feature.” And to furth…