Overview of PHP code quality tools

General Below tools provide a comprehensive set of rules and analyse the code from different angles. PHPStan PHPStan focuses on finding errors in your code without actually running it. It catches whole classes of bugs even before you write tests for the code. It moves PHP closer to compiled languages in the sense that the […]

How does browser fingerprinting work?

What is browser fingerprinting? Nowadays, most people are familiar with cookies – information stored in browsers that helps websites keep track of our settings and track our actions online. Many users know how to delete cookies or navigate in private mode hoping that this will grant them privacy and prevent companies from following their actions […]

Coding trivia 1

Random interesting stuff that I learned last week ER diagrams Entity Relationship diagrams are important concept in database design. They help to conceptualize the relationship between tables in a database. I was looking for a quick refresher on the ER diagrams. These two videos did the job: Part 1 and Part 2 Unix sockets You […]

Creating a custom keyboard layout in Linux

Sometimes you might want to modify the keyboard layout, for example to add non standard characters that you’re often using or if you’re writing in 2 different languages you might combine all their special characters in one keyboard layout. In my case I bought a keyboard that had the escape key mapped by default to […]

Setting up the fixture in PHPUnit

When running our tests we should begin with a know stage, called the fixture, and for that we might need to initialize variables etc. And after we finish the tests we might have some cleaning up to do. If you need to have custom code run before you execute them. PHPUnit allows you to configure […]

Setting up WordPress development environment with Docker

One of the biggest challenges in web development is to have a stable development environment and assuring that the website works when deploying on different servers. Docker helps us build isolated containers that give a this stable and predictable environment and saves many headaches when debugging our website. Thanks to the preconfigured images available on […]

Downloading and installing custom Linux kernels

You might want to install a different kernel to which you have supplied with your current version of Linux. This might be because another version might work better with your hardware. The Linux kernel is the core of the operating system that facilitates interaction between the hardware components and software. You can install a different […]

Setting custom PHP code sniffing rules

Code sniffing is the practice of checking the code for compliance with some pre-determined standards. It’s very important to run your code through a sniffer because it helps with maintenance and ensures better code quality. The most common standards in PHP are PSR-0, PSR-1, PSR2 and PEAR. These rules might specify details such as depth […]