Tutorials

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PHP Advanced

Serve 304s from PHP: Conditional GETs for Dynamic Content

Browsers are begging to skip downloads they already have - your PHP just never answers. ETag and If-Modified-Since handling turns repeat views into empty 304 responses.

Mar 28, 2026 3 min 333 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

SameSite, HttpOnly and the __Host- Prefix: Cookies Done Properly

The options-array setcookie signature made secure cookies writable in one call - and the __Host- name prefix gets the browser itself to enforce your security flags.

Mar 20, 2026 3 min 740 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

Your LIKE Search Has a Wildcard Injection Bug

Prepared statements stop SQL injection - but % and _ sail straight through into LIKE patterns, letting users dump whole tables or run pathological scans. The fix is three characters of escaping.

Mar 11, 2026 2 min 396 Read →

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PHP Advanced

Turn PHP Warnings into Exceptions (and Catch Them Like an Adult)

Warnings scroll past in logs while your app continues in a corrupted state. One error handler converts them to catchable ErrorExceptions - and changes how you write file and network code.

Mar 4, 2026 2 min 522 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

file_get_contents Is a Full HTTP Client (Timeouts, POST and All)

No cURL, no Guzzle, no problem: stream contexts give file_get_contents methods, headers, bodies, timeouts - plus a magic variable that captures response headers.

Feb 26, 2026 2 min 729 Read →

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PHP Advanced

PHP Has WeakMap Too - and It Fixes Per-Object Caching

Caching computed data per object with static arrays pins those objects in memory forever - a leak with a cache's haircut. PHP 8's WeakMap caches without owning.

Feb 20, 2026 2 min 449 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

preg_replace_callback: Regex Replacements With a Brain

When each match needs logic - lookups, formatting, escaping - preg_replace hits its ceiling. The callback variant runs code per match, and preg_quote keeps user input from breaking your patterns.

Feb 13, 2026 3 min 187 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

array_intersect_key: The Input Whitelist Hiding in the Standard Library

Mass-assignment bugs happen when request data flows unfiltered into updates. Two array functions - intersect_key and diff_key - are the terse, auditable filter.

Feb 8, 2026 2 min 490 Read →

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PHP Beginner

natsort, Collator and the Spaceship: PHP Sorting Like a Human

"item10" before "item2", "Öl" after "z", uppercase clustering before lowercase - default sorts betray human expectations three different ways. PHP has a fix for each.

Feb 4, 2026 2 min 253 Read →

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PHP Beginner

PHP Array Destructuring Goes Further Than You Think

Keyed destructuring, foreach unpacking, swaps, nested extraction - the [$a, $b] syntax has quietly become one of PHP's best readability tools.

Jan 28, 2026 2 min 178 Read →

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PHP Beginner

DatePeriod: The Loop You Were Hand-Rolling for Calendars

Every date in a month, every Monday for a year, billing cycles between two dates - DatePeriod iterates ranges natively, immutably and off-by-one-free.

Jan 23, 2026 2 min 688 Read →

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PHP Intermediate

Stop Translating Month Names by Hand: PHP's intl Extension

Currency placement, month names, ordinal suffixes, "1.234,56" vs "1,234.56" - the intl extension knows every locale's rules, and most PHP developers never call it.

Jan 18, 2026 2 min 362 Read →