Recent articles

Hexagonal architecture, also called ports and adapters, is a software design approach that helps structure an application by clearly separating the core logic from technical details and external systems. Instead of shaping your app around frameworks, protocols, or storage, you keep your focus on what the application does, and let everything else connect to it through interfaces. The pattern isn't tied to any specific language. The examples in this article are written in PHP to show how the idea can be applied, but the approach works the same way in any backend system.

Working with cache can drastically improve the performance of an application, especially when dealing with data that doesn't change too often. While Laravel provides solid support for caching through multiple drivers, it doesn't offer native support for cache tags. To work around this limitation, we'll integrate Symfony's Cache component, which brings tag support and fits well into the repository pattern we've already established. In this article, we'll build on the existing structure and focus on using cache tags to group and clear related data more efficiently.

OpenAI has surpassed $10 billion in annual recurring revenue, according to a company spokesperson. This milestone comes less than three years after the launch of ChatGPT. The reported figure includes revenue from consumer-facing products, ChatGPT business offerings, and the application programming interface. It excludes licensing income from Microsoft and large one-time agreements.

HMAC, short for Hash-based Message Authentication Code, is a method used to check that a message is both authentic and unmodified. It's a common tool in webhooks, APIs, and any place where secure communication between systems matters. The idea behind HMAC is to use a shared secret key along with a hashing algorithm to create a unique signature for a message. This signature acts like a stamp of trust, if anything changes in the message or if the wrong key is used, the signature won't match.

CQRS stands for Command Query Responsibility Segregation. It's a pattern that separates how an application reads data from how it writes data. This approach can help structure code more clearly, especially in systems that deal with complex business logic or need to scale certain operations differently.

As a Laravel project grows, it is common to see the same small functions repeated in multiple places such as formatting values, checking routes, or handling basic text transformations. Instead of scattering these across controllers or traits, a more structured approach is to collect them into a dedicated helper file. While Laravel does not include a default setup for this, Composer's autoload configuration makes it straightforward to register a custom helper file. This ensures those functions are always available throughout the application without manual includes.

The DS18B20 is a digital temperature sensor that comes in two versions: a small TO-92 package, and a waterproof variant often encased in a metal tube with a long cable. Both provide digital temperature readings and can be used in many indoor and outdoor projects. The DS18B20 uses a protocol called 1-Wire, which only needs one data line to communicate and can support multiple sensors on the same pin.

Becoming an engineering manager is not just about climbing the ladder. It is a complete shift in responsibility. You are no longer measured by the code you write or the tasks you complete. Now you are accountable for how the entire team performs. You can delegate work, but you are still responsible for results. If no one owns a problem, you do. That is not an extra detail, that is the job.

Indexes are one of the tools MySQL uses to make data access faster. Without them, the database engine has to scan every row in a table to find matching records. This kind of full scan can be slow, especially when dealing with large datasets. Indexes allow MySQL to skip most of the table and go straight to the rows it needs. They're not just about speed, though. Indexes also help with enforcing uniqueness, sorting results, and supporting specific types of queries. But they come with trade-offs, like extra storage use and slower write operations.

Memcache is a caching system that stores data in memory to make applications faster and more efficient. It works across multiple languages, including PHP, Python, Ruby, and others. In the context of PHP, it can reduce database load and speed up page rendering by keeping frequently accessed data available in memory. This article focuses on how to use Memcache specifically with PHP.