Beginner terms
Trailing Whitespace
Spaces or tabs at the end of a line — invisible but pollutes diffs and can cause subtle PHP issues.
6mo ago
Style beginner
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
PHP 7.0+
3
Requiring a second verification factor (OTP, hardware key) in addition to a password dramatically reduces account takeover risk.
OWASP A7:2021
6mo ago
Security beginner
Type Casting in PHP
PHP 5.0+
2
Explicitly converting a value to another type using (int), (string), (array), (object) casts or intval(), strval() functions.
6mo ago
PHP beginner
Unit Testing
PHP 5.0+
2
Automated tests that verify individual units of code (classes, methods) in isolation from external dependencies.
6mo ago
Testing beginner
UUID vs Auto-Increment IDs
1
UUIDs are globally unique identifiers that don't expose record counts or enable enumeration, at the cost of larger index size and random writes.
6mo ago
General beginner
Webhooks
PHP 5.0+
4
A reverse API — a service POSTs event notifications to a registered URL whenever something occurs, eliminating the need to poll.
6mo ago
Architecture beginner
Xdebug — Debugging & Profiling
PHP 5.0+
1
The essential PHP debugging extension providing step debugging, stack traces, code coverage, and profiling output.
6mo ago
PHP beginner
YAGNI
PHP 5.0+
2
You Aren't Gonna Need It — don't implement functionality until it's actually required.
6mo ago
Code Quality beginner
Yoda Conditions
PHP 5.0+
Writing comparisons with the constant on the left (42 === $x) to prevent accidental assignment — largely obsolete with modern tooling.
6mo ago
Style beginner
Code Smell
3
A surface indication in code that usually corresponds to a deeper design problem — not a bug, but a maintainability risk.
7mo ago
Code Quality beginner
DRY Principle
PHP 5.0+
Don't Repeat Yourself — every piece of knowledge should have a single, unambiguous representation in the codebase.
7mo ago
Code Quality beginner
Early Return Pattern
3
Exit a function as soon as the result is known rather than carrying state through the rest of the function body.
7mo ago
Style beginner
Input Validation vs Output Encoding
PHP 5.0+
5
Validation checks that input is acceptable; output encoding makes data safe for the context it's rendered in. Both are required.
7mo ago
General beginner
Insufficient Logging & Monitoring
Failure to log security events and monitor them allows attacks to go undetected and unresponded to.
CWE-778 OWASP A9:2021
7mo ago
Security beginner
6.5
Lazy Loading
HTML5
Defer loading or initialising a resource until it is actually needed, reducing startup cost and memory usage.
7mo ago
Performance beginner
Magic Number
PHP 5.0+
1
A numeric literal with no explanation — its meaning is unclear without context, harming readability and maintainability.
7mo ago
Code Quality beginner
Single Responsibility Principle
PHP 5.0+
A class or function should have one reason to change — doing one thing and doing it well.
7mo ago
General beginner