Running a PHP web cluster? Try TQCache, a Memcache compatible storage for PHP sessions (faster than Redis)
https://github.com/mevdschee/tqcache

https://redd.it/1qdcr9i
@r_php

Custom Collection Methods - Laravel In Practice EP1
https://youtu.be/ZiU1YTZP_g0

https://redd.it/1qdbr8e
@r_php

Open source strategies
https://tempestphp.com/blog/open-source-strategies

https://redd.it/1qdfkiu
@r_php

A free Shift to configure "Fast Laravel"

After implementing the strategies on a few different Laravel projects, I got tired of copy/pasting a bunch of snippets and files.

I figured I'd automate the tedium with a Shift... So, allow me to introduce the "Fast Laravel" Shift.

This free Shift configures a new, separate static middleware group (discussed in this Laravel News article) and adds two custom middleware for page caching.

These strategies (and more) are demonstrated in my "Fast Laravel" video course. If you want to learn more about the course and benefits of caching, there was a good Reddit discussion earlier this month.

https://redd.it/1qdiyb5
@r_php

PHP Async Multitask Process lib v1.0.7 version released
https://github.com/terremoth/php-async

https://redd.it/1qdj1hn
@r_php

Convert vardump output to PHPStan array shapes - Hell2Shape

Hi folks! Made a CLI tool that converts var\dump output into PHPStan type annotations. Check it out: https://github.com/Feolius/hell2shape

There's also a web version, if you want to try it without installing anything (see repo docs). Works locally in your browser without sending any data to server (thanks to php-wasm).

Useful when you need to type those messy arrays and stdClass objects, but can't be bothered to do it by hand. It's not designed to be perfect, but it provides a solid baseline for manual refinement.

Feedbacks welcome!





https://redd.it/1qdlox5
@r_php

AI generated content posts

A bit of a meta post, but /u/brendt_gd, could we please get an "AI" flair that must be added to every post that predominantly showcases AI generated content?

We get so many of these posts lately and it's just stupid. I haven't signed up to drown in AI slop. If the posters can't bother to put in any effort of their own, why would I want to waste my time with it? It's taking away from posts with actual substance.

For what it's worth, I'm personally in favour of banning slop posts under "low effort" content, but with a flair people could choose if they want to see that garbage.

https://redd.it/1qdrv9c
@r_php

Coupled vs Decoupled

What’s your approach if you’re a solo dev and you’re to build a small to medium web app.

Will you go full Laravel + blade (Coupled)?

OR

Do you prefer decoupling the backend and frontend…and use JS Frameworks (Decoupled)?

https://redd.it/1qdvr1t
@r_php

Live with Taylor Otwell
https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/2011851275424665691?s=46

https://redd.it/1qdvkl2
@r_php

Simplicity Matters
https://cosmastech.com/2026/01/16/simplicity-matters.html

https://redd.it/1qe3jiz
@r_php

Simplicity Matters
https://cosmastech.com/2026/01/16/simplicity-matters.html

https://redd.it/1qe3die
@r_php

Multiplayer Game of Life

https://gameoflife.zweiundeins.gmbh

This demonstrates a Swoole app streaming 2500 divs 5 times a second to the browser via SSE. As SSE is just HTTP, it's Brotli-compressed and manages 100x compression after a few minutes, due to Brotli window spanning the entire stream. It's multiplayer, so open two tabs side by side to see. A year ago I never thought somesthing like this possible with PHP - this runs on a 20$/year VPS.

https://redd.it/1qeafok
@r_php

SymfonyLive Paris 2026: "Doctrine inheritance"
https://symfony.com/blog/symfonylive-paris-2026-doctrine-inheritance?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Symfony%20Blog%20Feed

https://redd.it/1qef5e7
@r_php

Taylor Otwell interview about Laravel AI SDK
https://youtu.be/4mXUxk5noscriptw

https://redd.it/1qekw71
@r_php

Running PHP on AWS Lambda as a microservice

Finally had sometime to build a quick portfolio website for myself (https://www.niwebdev.co.uk if your interested!) and because my website will get little to no traffic I thought a serverless approach would be ideal.

I'm experienced with Python and Node.Js but PHP is my goto for a web application and wanted to experiment getting it running in Lambda.

Most of the heavy work is done for you with Bref (https://bref.sh) and it makes it super easy to build and deploy your PHP application.

Here are some of my findings which you might find useful if you want to go serverless with PHP:

Load Time

Pages are loaded between 40-60ms, cold start (no traffic within about 15 minutes) means the first page load is about 200-300ms. Overall very impressive.

SSL

All traffic is routed through the AWS API Gateway. This is brilliant because it handles the SSL for you, the downside is API Gateway only supports HTTPS. If someone accidentally uses HTTP they will get a 404. For my portfolio site I don't care, but on a customer site I would use a load balancer or I think Cloudfront can handle this better.

Web Server

Running PHP on Lamba eliminates the need for a web server. No more configuring Apache / Nginix / FrankenPHP. Doesn't matter if 1000 people hit your site at the same time, AWS will handle this.

Database / Caching

My site doesn't need a database or caching, but if you want to connect to these services you will need to add a NAT to your VPC. So even though you don't need to pay for a server, you will need a NAT for any site with complexity which costs more money than the low tier EC2 instances. I think a NAT costs about $30 a month before bandwidth and other fees.

State

Traditionally PHP is stateless, meaning nothing is preserved between requests. But using Lambda the same thread/worker can be reused. Lets say when your noscript loads and you set a user into memory, if you don't clear the state between each request it is possible you expose data to the wrong user. I added a clearState() function where I put any code needed to clean up at the start of each request.

Storage

To serve your static files and storage solutions in general you must use a CDN and S3. The only writable directory in Lambda is the temporary system directory. Most modern sites don't rely on server storage anymore so this isn't really an issue. The CDN and S3 is super cheap, probably costs next to nothing for my site.

Development vs Production

In my development environment I run Bref as a docker container. My production image uses php-84-fpm and my development image uses php-84-fpm-dev. The dev image has some useful extensions needed for development.

Summary

So far I would highly recommend switching from the traditional setup and go serverless with PHP. Just take into account the cost of the NAT which I don't need anyway for my site, but have setup for other sites I have now converted to serverless PHP and trimmed over $150 a month of the AWS bill.

Converting a site is very easy, especially if you already use S3 and a CDN.

Happy to answer any questions for anyone wanting help or advice.

https://redd.it/1qeob8o
@r_php

Livewire 4 Deep Dive: Components, Performance & New Directives
https://youtu.be/K6SIdjzbuYo

https://redd.it/1qf075r
@r_php

Laravel News Is the Live Stream Partner for Laracon EU 2026 - Laravel News
https://laravel-news.com/laravel-news-is-the-live-stream-partner-for-laracon-eu-2026

https://redd.it/1qj810t
@r_php

PHP 8.5 has been released for several months, but I finally found time to update my PHP cheat sheet
https://cheat-sheets.nth-root.nl/php-cheat-sheet.pdf

https://redd.it/1qi7pyf
@r_php

Laravel E-commerce Templates Advice

Hi everyone,

I’m not very experienced with Laravel templates, but for a project I’d need some e-commerce solutions.

The goal would be to build a webshop with around 80,000 products (tires), so each product has many variants. The shop would need faceted filtering (vehicle type / tire width / height / diameter, etc.).

Product data is received once a day via API in CSV format from multiple distributors. Customers should be able to register accounts. At the moment there is no online payment processor, but it’s possible that one will be needed later.

Shop operators would of course have access to an admin interface, where they can manually edit product prices and, if necessary, the available stock quantity.

Which templates would you recommend in this space that could realistically handle these requirements?

Thanks in advance for the help, and sorry if I missed any important details, I’ll add them in an edit if something comes up.

https://redd.it/1qj0yvw
@r_php

Anyone else seeing bias about AI among Laravel devs?

I was networking with some Laravel developers over the past few weeks, and I was struck by how polarized opinions are on how revolutionary AI is for back-end development.

What’s most shocking is the perspective difference among senior developers. Some seniors claim they’ve become 10x more productive, while others say it just generates a bunch of bugs and is useless in advanced tasks.

If you’re open to sharing ... what’s your experience level, and how much do you use AI in day-to-day coding (0–5)?


0 => 'never',
1 => 'rarely',
2 => 'sometimes',
3 => 'often',
4 => 'most of the time',
5 => 'always'
;

https://redd.it/1qj4lqx
@r_php

Is Domain Driven Design just needless complexity? My limited experience with it has been mixed at best.

I don't have a lot of experience with DDD so take this post with a grain of salt. It's personal experience rather than anything else and doesn't hold univeral truth.

------

For the past 6ish months I've worked on DDD project with an established team of 5 people. I'm the new guy.

I have nothing to compare it to so I'll take their word for it.

I figured as long as I'm working with it might as well educate myself on the matter. I read Domain Driven Design by Erik Evans, and "Implementing Domain-Driven Design" by Vaughn Vernon.

I liked Vernon's book a lot. It's more hands on.

In theory DDD sound good. It's clean, scalable, easy to work with, blends business needs with coding well.

My experience in practice has been different.

I won't talk about the businesses needs and how businesses guys communicate with devs because I feel like people will have very very different experiences.

I will however like to talk, at a high level, about the effects on the code.

In the project I work with it just seems to add needless complexity for the sake of having "layers" and clean design.

I can't say I have any strong opinions on that, but I do not like writing code for the sake of more abstraction that doesn't really do anything(ironically in Vernon's book this is mentioned as one of the pitfalls).

Not to mention the PR comments tend towards zealotry, sometimes, not all the time.

Even with a debugger the code can be hard to follow. There's 3 4 layers of abstraction even for simple queries to a db.

I feel like you need a team that already has DDD experience to actually implement DDD properly.

I'd like to hear other experiences with DDD. How well did it serves you?

https://redd.it/1qi6d6j
@r_php