Need help with Drupal or Grav admin, site building, design, or content? Contact us! 

Help Defend Democracy! → Join Battalion today.

Back to top with progress scrollbar

Symfony Station Communiqué - 09 February 2024

By Reuben Walker, 9 February, 2024
Small robot reading a book

Welcome to this week's Symfony Station communiqué. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy. Because open-source equals open societies, peeps. We also cover the cybersecurity world and the Fediverse (more open-source).

This week is jam-packed, and there is good content in all of our categories, so please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you. This is why we publish on Fridays. So you can savor it over your weekend. 😉

Or jump straight to your favorite section.

Once again, thanks go out to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our communiqué in their Week of Symfony.

My opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing.


Featured Item

This academic paper is aimed at pointy-headed intellectuals like me, but the gist is:

Our white paper outlines a long-term scientific vision for the development of digital-democracy technology. We contend that if digital democracy is to meet the ambition of enabling a participatory renewal in our societies, then a comprehensive multi-methods research effort is required that could, over the years, support its development in a democratically principled, empirically and computationally informed way.

Enabling the Digital Democratic Revival: A Research Program for Digital Democracy

It's about 10 years late, but maybe it will accomplish something. It's certainly in line with our mission.


Symfony

As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony.

Highlight -> "This week, Symfony 5.4.35, 6.3.12, 6.4.3 and 7.0.3 maintenance versions were released. The 6.3.12 version is the last one in that branch, so you should consider upgrading to Symfony 6.4 or higher soon. Meanwhile, the development activity was very intense and focused on adding new features to the upcoming Symfony 7.1 version, including a new TypeInfo component. Finally, we published a blog post about our experience upgrading websites to AssetMapper."

A Week of Symfony #892 (29 January - 4 February 2024)

SymfonyCasts has:

This week on SymfonyCasts!

This Week

Mounir Mouih explores:

Symfony in Finance: Unveiling Essential Tools

Filip Horvat shows us:

How to use the entity from the app (/src) scope in your independent standalone bundles for your Doctrine & Symfony projects

Symfony Scheduler — How it Really Works

Esens Consulting shows us how to:

Déployer une application Symfony et Vue.js sur Cloud Run

Visual Studio examines:

PHP Better Snippets

Useful if are a student and use VSCode for Symfony and PHP development.

Rahul Chavan looks at:

The Benefits of Avoiding Abstract Controller in Symfony

Roeland demonstrates:

Google authentication with Symfony 7

DBToolsBundle announces:

DbToolsBundle: a set of Symfony Console Commands to interact with your database

Radhwan Ben Youssef posts:

Maximizing Efficiency with Singleton Design Pattern in Symfony

Vasil Dakov shows us:

How to run Laminas Diagnostics in Symfony

DrupalizeMe has a new guide:

Symfony for Drupal Developers

eCommerce

Shopware shares its:

Shopware Developer Digest January 24

Here are a couple of the highlights.

From Björn Meyer:

Generate custom API Client for Shopware 6

Via Enizen Tech:

How to Integrate Shopware 6 Admin API?

Dragan Rapić explores:

Shopware 6 Data Abstraction Layer (DAL) Indexing Explain

Sylius has:

Month of Sylius: January

Highlights include:

The best CMS for Sylius – internal and external solutions from BitBag.

We recommend Sulu.

Create Preview Environments from your GitHub pipeline from Sorin Dumitrescu.

Platforms

Doğan Uçar compares:

Laminas Framework Series: Mezzio vs. MVC

CMSs

TYPO3 announces:

TYPO3 Association Co-Founds the Open Website Alliance

Open Source and Digital Sovereignty

As does Joomla:

Joomla! Joins Forces in the Open Website Alliance

And Drupal:

Drupal Association Co-Founds the Open Website Alliance

Good to see this from these three as it ties in with the ideals championed in the featured article. And our mission here at Symfony Station.

DrupalCI and all patch testing will be turned off on July 1, 2024

Nominations are now open for the 2024 Aaron Winborn Award

Drupal Contribution Feedback Survey 

Contributors, thanks for your work and please take the survey. Also, we need more Drupal contributors.

Frontkom announces:

Drupal Gutenberg is making waves

This is fantastic. And I am definitely going to experiment with their starterkit theme.

Balint Pekker asks:

To Patch or Not To Patch

LN WebWorks examines:

Mastering PHP Debugging: A Guide to Xdebug in Lando & DDEV for Drupal

Must-Know Features Of Webform Module For Drupal 10

DrupalEasy has:

Why you should care about using settings.local.php

DrupalEasy Podcast S16E4 - Kevin Quillen - Drupal 10 Development Cookbook

Great book.

Specbee looks at:

Style Made Simple with Acquia Site Studio’s Style Guide Manager

Factorial explores:

A weekend dedicated to Drupal CMS

DewanCodes examines:

Entity field validators and constraints in Drupal

QED42 has a case study:

Drupal 10 Migration Success Story: ADA’s Transformation through Multisite Architecture

Dan Chadwick shows us:

How to Secure JSON:API Endpoints in Drupal with OAuth

DrupalCamp Cemaes explains:

Social Media and DrupalCamp Cemaes

This could have been in the Fediverse section as well.

Markie (not Mark) demonstrates how to:

Show the last author of a node in the Drupal content list

Brian Perry looks at:

Extending The Drupal API Client

ImageX shares:

Drupal Calendar Creation Unleashed: Useful Modules And A Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Golems demonstrates:

Improving Page Loading Speed in Drupal with Different Caching Solutions

Perry Aryee has:

Upgrading your site from Drupal 9 to 10

Oliver Davies is:

Experimenting with Architectural Testing


PHP

This Week

Nemanja Milenkovic compares:

PHP 8.2 vs PHP 8.3: The Evolution of a Server-Side Powerhouse

Alex shows us how to:

Code faster with the "Top-Bottom" technique

WebWash explores:

Full-text Search in Database using PhpStorm

The Grumpy Programmer has:

Thoughts On Mentoring

Please give back to the communities who supported your career.

Laravel News shows us how to:

Make your app faster with PHP 8.3

Ozan Akman explains:

Understanding Automated Testing

php[architect] examines:

Getting Started With Docker

Exakat looks at:

Common services with PHP applications

Harish Kumar explores:

Mastering Code Consistency: A Guide to PHP-CS-Fixer Integration with VSCode

Mkhalid examines:

Mastering Behat Testing: A Comprehensive Guide for Implementing BDD in PHP Projects

Abdulbasit Rubeiyya has:

Google’s IDX with PHP: First Look


More Programming

Zach Leatherman looks at:

The Good, The Bad, The Web Components

Noupe shares:

The Benefits of Progressive Web Apps and How to Build Them

John has:

PR-007 - Why you don't need React

Your weekly PSA of why React sucks.

Infoworld reports:

jQuery 4.0 trims browser support, removes APIs

That's nice, but just use vanilla JS and web components peeps.

Shalitha Suranga shares:

HTML Attributes That Every Web Developer Should Know

Go Make Things explores:

HTML as the baseline

This x 1000.

Smashing Mag opines:

Web Development Is Getting Too Complex, And It May Be Our Fault

Of fucking course.

Free Code Camp explores:

Vim Key Bindings – Vim Keys List Reference

Moz reports on technical SEO:

3 Unexpected Examples of Technical SEO Issues (And How to Resolve Them)

Onfold examines:

Is it time to ditch MySQL and PostgreSQL for SQLite?

Venture Beat reports:

Meet ‘Smaug-72B’: The new king of open-source AI

AI is here to stay. So, we need to support the open-source versions.

Hugging Face launches open source AI assistant maker to rival OpenAI’s custom GPTs

Cool.

Dries Buyaert says:

Goodbye third-party cookies

He should also say goodbye Chrome.

404 Media reports:

The Guy Building an Open-Source Google Search Competitor

Bookmark this site, Stract.


Fighting for Democracy

Please visit our Support Ukraine page to learn how you can help kick Russia out of Ukraine (eventually).

The cyber response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

Reuters reports:

Philippines wards off cyber attacks from China-based hackers

The Next Web reports:

EU member states approve world-first AI law

Ars Technica reports:

Data broker allegedly selling de-anonymized info to face FTC lawsuit after all

The Verge reports:

Meta says you better disclose your AI fakes or it might just pull them

Uh. Right. See the oversite board article below.

Microsoft has:

Iran accelerates cyber ops against Israel from chaotic start

Decipher reports:

U.S. Cracks Down on Spyware With Visa Restriction Policy

This should apply to about 20% of Israelis and plenty of other c^nts around the world.

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

404 Media has an example:

Phone Spy Tool Pitched for ‘Riot Detection’ in NYC

The Kyiv Post reports:

Ukraine Calls on Network Providers to Review Security Measures in Light of Increased Cyberattacks

The Register reports:

JetBrains urges swift patching of latest critical TeamCity flaw

Iran's cyber operations in Israel a potential prelude to US election interference

The MIVD and AIVD report:

Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands uncovers COATHANGER, a stealthy Chinese FortiGate RAT

The Guardian opines:

Meta and Mark Zuckerberg must not be allowed to shape the next era of humanity

That's for goddamn sure.

Deutsch Welle has the evidence:

Facebook at 20: From hope to disillusionment

Bleeping Computer piles on:

Facebook ads push new Ov3r_Stealer password-stealing malware

And TechCrunch provides reason number 25,212:

Oversight Board calls on Meta to rewrite ‘incoherent’ rules against faked videos

And 25,213:

Meta cuts off third-party access to Facebook Groups, leaving developers and customers in disarray

After similar c^ntitry from Shitter and Rekkit, anyone who still bases their business on APIs from these mofos deserves what they get. Build your company on open-source software not shitty proprietary monopolies.

Politico reports:

The far right is scaring away Washington’s private hacker army

Proton opines:

Apple’s DMA compliance plan is a trap and a slap in the face for the European Commission

Apple is the least c^ntish of the big tech companies, but they are still c^nts.

Cory Doctorow elaborates:

Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”

Fast Company reports:

E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance

Sigh.

404 Media reports that not happy with creating fake porn:

4chan Is Editing Pictures to Clothe Women

It must be a legal requirement that if you are on 4chan, you have to be a USDA certified organic shithead.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

And:

An Instant Fake ID Factory

Bleeping Computer reports:

Hackers steal data of 2 million in SQL injection, XSS attacks

The Register reports:

IT suppliers hacked off with Uncle Sam's demands in aftermath of cyberattacks

Oh no, we have to be secure because we get rich off the military via U.S. taxpayers.

Fortune reports:

AI chatbots are making cybersecurity work much easier–but foundation models are about to revolutionize it

9 to 5 Mac reports:

Proton launches open-source, end-to-end encrypted password manager for business

Cool.

TechCrunch reports:

A fake app masquerading as password manager LastPass just got pulled from the App Store

Oh no, we have to have a monopoly so we can protect people's privacy.

PBS reports:

Multiple threats to election systems prompt U.S. cybersecurity agency to boost cooperation with states


Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 54

Lemmy ask you anything (again)

Bluesky opens the network

It's awesome that it's been taken over by the Japanese community.

TechCrunch has more:

Bluesky is now open for anyone to join

Hopefully millions of U.S. dummies will leave shitter and move here. And stay off the Fediverse.

How Twitter’s descent into chaos is paving the way for a new web

The Verge publishes:

The Fediverse, explained

Julian Fietkau shares an interesting ActivityPub project:

Daily Rucks: The How and Why

Terence Eden has another:

A (tiny, incomplete, single user, write-only) ActivityPub server in PHP

NodeBB gives an:

January Update on ActivityPub Development

Cool.

The Verge reports:

The creators of Twitterrific are making an app to read (almost) anything on the web

Yeah.

Bookmarking app Betula announces:

Version 1.2.0

Social Media Today reports:

Meta Continues To Develop Its Fediverse Connection Options for Threads

Axios reports:

First look: Meta won't recommend political content on Threads

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

  • That’s it for this week. Please share this communiqué.
  • Also, please join our newsletter list at the bottom of our site’s pages. Joining gets you each week's communiqué in your inbox (a day early).
  • Follow us on Flipboard or at @symfonystation@phpc.social on Mastodon for daily coverage. Consider joining the @phpc.social instance.
  • Do you like Reddit? Why? Instead, follow us on kbin for a better Fediverse and Symfony-based experience. We have a Symfony Magazine and Collection there.

Do you own or work for an organization that would be interested in our promotion opportunities? Or supporting our journalistic efforts? If so, please get in touch with us. We’re in our infancy, so it’s extra economical. 😉

More importantly, if you are a Ukrainian company with coding-related products, we can offer free promotion on our Support Ukraine page. Or, if you know of one, get in touch.

You can find a vast array of curated evergreen content on our communiques page.

Author

Reuben Walker headshot

Reuben Walker

Founder
Symfony Station

section separator
Article Type
Donate using Liberapay

Symfony Station covers the essential news in the Symfony, PHP, and Fediverse development communities with a focus on protecting democracy. Please use the button above to make a small donation to help cover our out-of-pocket costs. Our labor is provided free of charge to support the communities we write about.

Join our newsletter list

Subscribe to The Payload, our weekly newsletter exploring the Symfony Universe.

  Start exploring!