PHP

Published: 7/22/2025

I have a long history with PHP. I started learning it when it was still at version 5.2 and faintly remember being excited to refactor all my arrays from array() to [] when 5.4 was released.

The language has evolved, my skills have improved and the web development landscape is vastly different from what it was back then. I don’t write a lot of PHP nowadays, but I still follow updates and notable community members. Maintaining existing projects also makes me check out what’s new every now and then.

If you’re curious about my PHP stack, you should check out Reun Media PHP app template. It might not always be the latest and greatest, but I try to keep it up to date whenever I discover new tools and learn new things.

Tool Info

back-end
languages
server

Using private Composer packages in Docker

Additional Tools for PHP

Buggregator

debugging
devtools

composer/class-map-generator

utilities

GitHub

composer-normalize

code-quality
devtools

GitHub

Doctrine

back-end
database

I use Doctrine ORM or DBAL along with Doctrine Migrations for all my database operations.

Monolog

debugging
devtools
logging

Pest

code-quality
devtools
testing

I replaced PHPUnit with Pest in all my projects in 2024. I already used Codeception Specify and Verify in my PHPUnit tests and migrating to Pest allowed me to get rid of PHPUnit boilerplate code.

Check out reun/test-utilities for my own testing utilities.

PHP CS Fixer

code-quality
devtools
dx

My preferred rules can be found in Reun Media PHP app template.

PHP Debug Bar

debugging
devtools
logging

I use middlewares/debugbar for integration.

PHP-DI

devtools

Learning the concept of dependency injection took me a while back in the day, but it was absolutely worth it. PHP-DI is my preferred DI container and I like the way it allows me to configure definitions in plain PHP code instead of using separate configuration files.

Check out Reun Media PHP App Definitions to see how I use it.

PHP dotenv

devtools
utilities

GitHub

PHPStan

code-quality
devtools
dx

I use phpstan/phpstan-strict-rules to enforce stricter code quality. bnf/phpstan-psr-container helps when working with DI containers.

PSR

devtools

PHP Standards Recommendations keeps my PHP code clean and allows swapping and interoperability of different packages.

PSR-15 Middlewares

utilities

A collection of useful middlewares. I use ContentType to make PHP Debug Bar work with Slim.

GitHub

Respect\Validation

validation

I use this for data validation. There’s also Valinor, which looks interesting, but I haven’t tried it yet.

Slim Framework

back-end
framework

My PHP framework of choice for over 10 years. I’ve always preferred the simplicity and predictability of middleware approach over MVC.

Symfony

utilities

I don’t use Symfony framework, but I do use some individual components such as Cache, Console and Serializer.

Twig

front-end

Check out reun/twig-utilities for my own utilities I’ve written. I also use twig/intl-extra and twig/markdown-extra when needed.

whoops

debugging
devtools

I use Slim whoops to integrate whoops with Slim. There’s also a whoops middleware.

I also sometimes use

Guzzle
HTML Purifier
Parsedown

PHP