DrupalCon sessions about PHP
Last time, we gathered together DrupalCon Baltimore sessions about DevOps. Before that, we explored the area of Front End, Site Building, Drupal Showcase, Coding and Development, Project Management and Case Studies. And that was not our last stop. This time, we looked at sessions that were presented in the area of PHP.
Advanced debugging techniques from Patrick Allaert
This session was not about Xdebug. It was about tools that let you know what’s really happening in your PHP code. Tools like the phpdbg debugger, process tracing tools like strace, ltrace, the Linux inotify mechanism, tcpdump/wireshark for network analysis or MySQL Proxy for real-time SQL debugging and monitoring.
Bending Behat's Benefits by Steve Persch from Pantheon
This session covered some of the good, bad, and ugly ways Pantheon uses Behat. Behat is a tool for having better conversations with your team about expectations for the software being built.
Dependency Injection in PHP and Drupal by Hussain Abbas from Axelerant
In this session, attendees learned what Dependency Injection is and how it helps them structure their programs better. They learned some very basic concepts like constructor injection with analogies and examples and then moved on to see how it is done in real life.
Development Workflow Tools for Open-Source PHP Libraries by Greg Anderson from Pantheon
In this session, the author looked at how attendees could get the most out of GitHub source code repository, Packagist package manager for Composer, Travis CI continuous integration service, Coveralls code coverage service, Scrutinizer static analysis service, Box2 phar builder, Sami api documentation generator, ReadTheDocs online documentation reader service, Composer scripts and projects for running local tests and builds. After mastering these tools, attendees should be able to quickly set up a new PHP library project and use it in their Drupal modules.
Hacking Your Way to Better Security by Colin O'Dell from Unleashed Technologies
This session presented common security vulnerabilities. Namely, how they are exploited and how to protect against them. The author explored several of the OWASP Top 10 attack vectors like SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and others. Each topic was approached from the perspective of an attacker to see how these vulnerabilities can be detected and exploited using several realistic examples. Moreover, he then applied this knowledge to see how web applications can be secured against such vulnerabilities.
Improving Code Quality with Static Analysis by Joseph Purcell from Digital Bridge Solutions
In this session, the author looked at how to use static analysis on a project to identify incorrect code using Code Climate as an example. The main thing for this session was an understanding of static analysis and how to tie its automation into the development cycle of a project to improve code quality.
Plugins, Composer and PHP7 OH MY! by Kris Vanderwater from Acquia
In this session, attendees dug into some serious PHP & plugin-theory, because the author discussed the benefits of adopting the new language features and compared Drupal 8's plugins with the new system.
Realtime PHP using websockets by Jeff Kolesnikowicz from CodePoets
This session discussed some use cases for websockets as well as strategies for implementing websockets into your PHP application. It looked at the most popular websocket protocols and specifically an overview of the WAMP protocol and the PHP Ratchet library. Additionally, the talk was also about WAMPv2 and Thruway. In the end, everybody had a better sense of what websockets are, how they work, and how to use them in your application.
