Php terms
The engine behind the web's most-used server-side language
PHP powers an enormous portion of the web — from WordPress and Laravel to custom e-commerce platforms. This category covers the language internals, core functions, OOP features, type system, performance patterns, and PHP-specific quirks that every serious PHP developer should understand deeply. Whether you are writing procedural scripts or building full-stack applications with modern PHP 8.x features, these terms form the foundation.
MySQL Connection Pooling PHP 5.1+
Reusing database connections across requests instead of opening and closing a new connection on every request.
1mo ago
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PDO Transactions PHP 5.1+ PDO wraps multiple queries in an atomic unit — either all succeed or all roll back.
1mo ago
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PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES PHP 5.1+
Controls whether PDO sends real prepared statements to the database or emulates them client-side in PHP.
CWE-89 OWASP A3:2021
1mo ago
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PDOStatement::bindParam() vs bindValue() PHP 5.1+
Two PDO methods for binding variables to placeholders — bindParam() binds by reference (evaluated at execute), bindValue() binds by value (evaluated immediately).
1mo ago
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PHP Generators PHP 5.5+
Functions using yield that produce values lazily — one at a time — instead of building a complete array in memory.
1mo ago
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#[Override] Attribute (PHP 8.3) PHP 8.3+
The #[Override] attribute tells PHP (and static analysers) that a method is intentionally overriding a parent class or interface method — if no such method exists in a parent, PHP throws an error at class load time.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Anonymous Functions / Closures (PHP 5.3) PHP 5.3+
PHP 5.3 introduced anonymous functions (closures) — function() {} expressions assignable to variables, passable as callbacks, and able to capture outer scope with use().
2mo ago
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array_map / filter / reduce as FP Patterns PHP 5.3+
PHP's array_map(), array_filter(), and array_reduce() enable functional-style data transformation pipelines — cleaner than imperative loops for many common patterns.
2mo ago
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Attributes #[] Replacing Docblock Annotations PHP 8.0+
PHP 8.0 native attributes (#[Route('/home')]) replace fragile DocBlock @annotations — they're syntactically valid, parseable without reflection hacks, and supported by IDEs and static analysis.
2mo ago
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Copy-on-Write (CoW) in PHP Arrays PHP 7.0+
PHP arrays are not copied when assigned or passed to functions — they share the same internal buffer until one copy is modified. Only then does PHP perform a real copy. This makes reading large arrays cheap but silent mutations expensive.
2mo ago
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create_function() — The Dynamic Code Smell PHP 4.0+
create_function() created anonymous functions from strings — deprecated PHP 7.2, removed PHP 8. It used eval() internally, risked code injection, and was always replaceable with proper closures.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Cross-Version Compatibility Testing PHP 7.0+
Testing PHP code across multiple versions uses CI matrix builds, phpenv/phpbrew, Docker multi-version setups, and static analysis to catch compatibility issues before deployment.
2mo ago
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DI Containers — PHP-DI, Symfony & Laravel Compared PHP 7.4+
A Dependency Injection container automates wiring of class dependencies — instead of manually constructing objects and their dependencies, the container reads type hints and builds the full object graph. PHP-DI, Symfony's DIC, and Laravel's service container are the main options.
2mo ago
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DOMDocument & XPath in PHP PHP 5.0+
PHP's DOMDocument extension parses HTML and XML into a traversable tree. Combined with DOMXPath, you can query the document with XPath expressions — far more powerful than regex for extracting data from HTML.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Engine Exceptions — Error Hierarchy (PHP 7.0) PHP 7.0+
PHP 7.0 made fatal engine errors catchable as Error subclasses — TypeError, ParseError, ArithmeticError, DivisionByZeroError — via the shared Throwable interface.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Enums — First-Class Enumerations (PHP 8.1) PHP 8.1+
PHP 8.1 native enums replace class constant hacks — providing type-safe, enumerable, matchable values with optional backing values (: string or : int).
2mo ago
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Generators & yield (PHP 5.5) PHP 5.5+
Generators (PHP 5.5) use yield to produce values lazily — enabling memory-efficient iteration over large datasets without loading everything into memory.
2mo ago
php intermediate
Guzzle HTTP Client PHP 7.2+
Guzzle is PHP's most popular HTTP client library — providing a clean API for making synchronous and asynchronous HTTP requests, handling middleware, retries, authentication, and multipart uploads, with PSR-7 and PSR-18 compliance.
2mo ago
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Late Static Binding — PHP 5.3 Feature PHP 5.3+
static:: (Late Static Binding, PHP 5.3) refers to the called class at runtime — unlike self:: which always refers to the class where the method is defined.
2mo ago
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mb_string — Multibyte String Functions PHP 4.0+
PHP's native string functions operate on bytes, not characters. The mb_string extension provides mb_strlen(), mb_substr(), mb_strtolower() and 100+ equivalents that correctly handle multibyte encodings like UTF-8.
2mo ago
php intermediate