PEST is a modern testing framework for PHP that focuses on clean syntax, readability, and developer experience. It builds on PHPUnit but provides a much more expressive and minimalistic interface.

📌 PEST = "PHP Testing for Humans"
It’s designed for developers who want to write fast, readable, and elegant tests — with less boilerplate.

🚀 Why Use PEST Instead of PHPUnit?

PEST is built on top of PHPUnit, but it:

• Provides a cleaner, simpler syntax

• Removes unnecessary structure

• Encourages a functional, behavior-driven style

• Still supports traditional PHPUnit classes if needed

🔍 Example – PHPUnit vs. PEST

PHPUnit:

class UserTest extends TestCase
{
    public function test_user_has_name()
    {
        $user = new User('John');
        $this->assertEquals('John', $user->name);
    }
}

PEST:

it('has a name', function () {
    $user = new User('John');
    expect($user->name)->toBe('John');
});

👉 Much shorter and easier to read — especially when writing many tests.

🧩 Key Features of PEST

• ✅ Elegant, expressive syntax (inspired by Jest/Mocha)

• 🧪 Supports unit, feature, API, and browser-based testing

• 🧱 Data-driven testing via with([...])

• 🧬 Test hooks like beforeEach() / afterEach()

• 🎨 Fully extensible with plugins and custom expectations

• 🔄 Fully compatible with PHPUnit — you can run both side by side

🛠️ Installation

In a Laravel or Composer project:

composer require pestphp/pest --dev
php artisan pest:install  # for Laravel projects

Then run tests:

./vendor/bin/pest

🧠 Summary

PEST is ideal if you:

• Want to write tests that are fun and easy to maintain

• Prefer clean, modern syntax

• Already use PHPUnit but want a better experience

💡 Many Laravel developers are adopting PEST because it integrates seamlessly with Laravel and truly makes testing feel "human" — just like its slogan says.

OPcache is a built-in bytecode caching extension for PHP that significantly improves performance by precompiling PHP code and storing it in memory (RAM).

⚙️ How Does OPcache Work?

Normally, every PHP request goes through:

1. Reading the PHP source file

2. Parsing and compiling it into bytecode

3. Executing the bytecode

With OPcache, this process happens only once. After the first request, PHP uses the precompiled bytecode from memory, skipping the parsing and compiling steps.

🚀 Benefits of OPcache

php -i | grep opcache.enable

Or in code:

phpinfo();

📦 Typical Configuration (php.ini)

opcache.enable=1
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000
opcache.validate_timestamps=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=2

💡 In production, it’s common to set opcache.validate_timestamps=0 — meaning PHP won’t check for file changes on every request. This gives even more performance, but you’ll need to manually reset the cache after code updates.

🧪 When Is OPcache Useful?

OPcache is especially helpful for:

• Laravel, Symfony, WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3

• High-traffic applications

• Large codebases

🧼 How to Clear the Cache (e.g., after a deployment)

Via PHP:

opcache_reset();

Or from the command line:

php -r "opcache_reset();"

🧠 Summary

OPcache is a simple but powerful performance booster for any PHP application. It should be enabled in every production environment — it’s free, built-in, and drastically reduces load times and server strain.

Laravel Octane is an official package for the Laravel framework that dramatically boosts application performance by running Laravel on high-performance application servers like Swoole or RoadRunner.

⚡ What Makes Laravel Octane Special?

Instead of reloading the Laravel framework on every HTTP request (as with traditional PHP-FPM setups), Octane keeps the application in memory, avoiding repeated bootstrapping. This makes your Laravel app much faster.

🔧 How Does It Work?

Laravel Octane uses persistent worker servers (e.g., Swoole or RoadRunner), which:

1. Bootstrap the Laravel application once,

2. Then handle incoming requests repeatedly without restarting the framework.

🚀 Benefits of Laravel Octane

RoadRunner is a high-performance PHP application server developed by Spiral Scout. It serves as a replacement for traditional PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) and offers a major performance boost by keeping your PHP application running persistently — especially useful with frameworks like Laravel or Symfony.

🚀 What Makes RoadRunner Special?

✅ Worker-Based Performance

• PHP scripts are not reloaded on every request. Instead, they run continuously in persistent worker processes (similar to Node.js or Swoole).

• This eliminates the need to re-bootstrap the framework on every request — resulting in significantly faster response times than with PHP-FPM.

✅ Built with Go

• RoadRunner is written in the programming language Go, which provides high concurrency, easy deployment, and great stability.

✅ Features

• Native HTTP server (with HTTPS, Gzip, CORS, etc.)

• PSR-7 and PSR-15 middleware support

• Supports:

  • Queues (e.g., Redis, RabbitMQ)

  • gRPC

  • WebSockets

  • Static file serving

  • Prometheus metrics

  • RPC between Go and PHP

• Hot reload support with a watch plugin

⚙️ How Does It Work?

1. RoadRunner starts PHP worker processes.

2. These workers load your full framework bootstrap once.

3. Incoming HTTP or gRPC requests are forwarded to the PHP workers.

4. The response is returned through the Go layer — fast and concurrent.

📦 Common Use Cases:

• Laravel + RoadRunner (instead of Laravel + PHP-FPM)

• High-traffic applications and APIs

• Microservices

• Real-time apps (e.g., using WebSockets)

• Low-latency, serverless-like services

📉 RoadRunner vs PHP-FPM

PDO stands for PHP Data Objects and it's a database abstraction layer in PHP. It provides an object-oriented interface to access different types of databases—such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite—without needing to change much of your code.

Key Features of PDO:

✅ Consistent API
Same code style regardless of which database you use.

✅ Prepared Statements
Helps prevent SQL injection via bound parameters:

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = :id");
$stmt->execute(['id' => $userId]);

✅ Transactions Support
Great for use cases like banking systems or other operations that need rollback/commit.

✅ Exception-based Error Handling

$pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

✅ Easy Database Switching
Switching from MySQL to PostgreSQL? Usually only the DSN and driver need to be changed.

Example: Connecting to MySQL with PDO

$dsn = 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=testdb;charset=utf8mb4';
$user = 'root';
$pass = '';

try {
    $pdo = new PDO($dsn, $user, $pass);
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    echo "Connected successfully!";
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
}

Summary:

PDO is the recommended way to work with databases in modern PHP applications—especially for its security, flexibility, and ease of use.

Doctrine DBAL (Database Abstraction Layer) is a PHP library that provides an abstraction layer for database access. It is part of the Doctrine project (a popular ORM for PHP), but it can be used independently of the ORM.

Purpose and Benefits of Doctrine DBAL:

Doctrine DBAL offers a unified API to interact with different databases (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc.) without writing raw SQL specific to each database system.

Key Features of Doctrine DBAL:

• Connection Management

• • Easily configure and manage connections to various database systems.

  • Supports connection pooling, transactions, and more.

• SQL Query Builder

• • Build SQL queries programmatically using an object-oriented API:

$qb = $conn->createQueryBuilder();
$qb->select('u.id', 'u.name')
   ->from('users', 'u')
   ->where('u.age > :age')
   ->setParameter('age', 18);
$stmt = $qb->executeQuery();

• Database Independence

  • The same code works with different database systems (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) with minimal changes.

• Schema Management

  • Tools to create, update, and compare database schemas.

  • Useful for migrations and automation.

• Data Type Conversion

  • Automatically converts data between PHP types and database-native types.

use Doctrine\DBAL\DriverManager;

$conn = DriverManager::getConnection([
    'dbname' => 'test',
    'user' => 'root',
    'password' => '',
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'driver' => 'pdo_mysql',
]);

$result = $conn->fetchAllAssociative('SELECT * FROM users');

When to Use DBAL Instead of ORM:

You might choose DBAL without ORM if:

• You want full control over your SQL.

• Your project doesn't need complex object-relational mapping.

• You're working with a legacy database or custom queries.

Summary:

Doctrine DBAL is a powerful tool for clean, portable, and secure database access in PHP. It sits between raw PDO usage and a full-featured ORM like Doctrine ORM, making it ideal for developers who want abstraction and flexibility without the overhead of ORM logic.

Redux is a state management library for JavaScript applications, often used with React. It helps manage the global state of an application in a centralized way, ensuring data remains consistent and predictable.

Core Concepts of Redux

1. Store

   • Holds the entire application state.

   • There is only one store per application.

2. Actions

   • Represent events that trigger state changes.

   • Are simple JavaScript objects with a type property and optional data (payload).

3. Reducers

   • Functions that calculate the new state based on an action.

   • They are pure functions, meaning they have no side effects.

4. Dispatch

   • A method used to send actions to the store.

5. Selectors

   • Functions that extract specific values from the state.

Why Use Redux?

• Simplifies state management in large applications.

• Prevents prop drilling in React components.

• Makes state predictable by enforcing structured updates.

• Enables debugging with tools like Redux DevTools.

Alternatives to Redux

If Redux feels too complex, here are some alternatives:

• React Context API – suitable for smaller apps

• Zustand – a lightweight state management library

• Recoil – developed by Facebook, flexible for React

Salesforce Apex is an object-oriented programming language specifically designed for the Salesforce platform. It is similar to Java and is primarily used to implement custom business logic, automation, and integrations within Salesforce.

Key Features of Apex:

• Cloud-based: Runs exclusively on Salesforce servers.

• Java-like Syntax: If you know Java, you can learn Apex quickly.

• Tightly Integrated with Salesforce Database (SOQL & SOSL): Enables direct data queries and manipulations.

• Event-driven: Often executed through Salesforce triggers (e.g., record changes).

• Governor Limits: Salesforce imposes limits (e.g., maximum SOQL queries per transaction) to maintain platform performance.

Uses of Apex:

• Triggers: Automate actions when records change.

• Batch Processing: Handle large data sets in background jobs.

• Web Services & API Integrations: Communicate with external systems.

• Custom Controllers for Visualforce & Lightning: Control user interfaces.

The Whoops PHP library is a powerful and user-friendly error handling tool for PHP applications. It provides clear and well-structured error pages, making it easier to debug and fix issues.

Key Features of Whoops

✅ Beautiful, interactive error pages
✅ Detailed stack traces with code previews
✅ Easy integration into existing PHP projects
✅ Support for various frameworks (Laravel, Symfony, Slim, etc.)
✅ Customizable with custom handlers and loggers

Installation

You can install Whoops using Composer:

composer require filp/whoops

Basic Usage

Here's a simple example of how to enable Whoops in your PHP project:

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

use Whoops\Run;
use Whoops\Handler\PrettyPageHandler;

$whoops = new Run();
$whoops->pushHandler(new PrettyPageHandler());
$whoops->register();

// Trigger an error (e.g., calling an undefined variable)
echo $undefinedVariable;

If an error occurs, Whoops will display a clear and visually appealing debug page.

Customization & Extensions

You can extend Whoops by adding custom error handling, for example:

use Whoops\Handler\CallbackHandler;

$whoops->pushHandler(new CallbackHandler(function ($exception, $inspector, $run) {
    error_log($exception->getMessage());
}));

This version logs errors to a file instead of displaying them.

Use Cases

Whoops is mainly used in development environments to quickly detect and fix errors. However, in production environments, it should be disabled or replaced with a custom error page.

Swift is a powerful and user-friendly programming language developed by Apple for building apps on iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It was introduced in 2014 as a modern alternative to Objective-C, designed for speed, safety, and simplicity.

Key Features of Swift:

• Safety: Prevents common programming errors like null pointer dereferencing.
• Readability & Maintainability: Clear, intuitive syntax makes code easier to write and understand.
• Performance: Optimized for high-speed execution, comparable to C++.
• Interactivity: Playgrounds allow developers to test code and see results in real-time.
• Open Source: Since 2015, Swift has been an open-source project, continuously evolving with community contributions.

Swift is primarily used for Apple platforms but can also be utilized for server-side applications and even Android or Windows apps in some cases.