Fresh Resources for Web Designers and Developers (October 2024)

It’s time for our monthly roundup!

In this edition, we’ve gathered some exciting new resources for web developers, with a focus on the PHP ecosystem.

PHP has experienced a bit of a renaissance lately, especially with Laravel’s influence on the JavaScript ecosystem, and with the upcoming release of PHP 8.4 around the end of this year, PHP is getting more interesting to work with. We also have a few resources that are not PHP-specific but are worth checking out.

So, without further ado, let’s dive in and see the full list.

PHP Data Block

Data Block is a PHP package designed to help you easily manage, query, filter, and set nested data structures. This package makes it easy and will boost your productivity, especially when handling complex JSON, hierarchical configurations, or deeply nested arrays.

CPX

CPX, short for Composer Package Executor, allows you to run commands from any Composer package, even if it’s not installed in your project. It is quite similar to how npx works in npm, so you can just run cpx vendor/package to invoke the command from a package.

AI Services

The AI Service WordPress plugin provides a central place for using AI in WordPress, whether through PHP, REST API, JavaScript, or WP-CLI. It allows other plugins to easily integrate AI capabilities from various providers like Anthropic, Google Gemini, or OpenAI, which is already built into the plugin. You can also add support for other AI services.

Pan

Pan is a lightweight, privacy-focused PHP analytics library that tracks impressions, hovers, and clicks without collecting personal data. With the `data-pan` attribute, you can easily monitor interactions like views and clicks. It integrates smoothly with Laravel, Inertia, and Livewire.

Composer Dependency Analyser

Composer Dependency Analyser is a fast, lightweight tool that detects unused and misplaced Composer dependencies. It’s easy to use, highly configurable, and scans large projects in seconds, with support for PHP 7.2 to 8.4. It’s a great tool to keep your project clean and optimized.

Howdy

Howdy is a starter kit for building WordPress plugins with modern PHP practices. It provides a pre-configured boilerplate that includes tools like PSR-4 Autoloading with Composer, PHPCS, and a Dependency Injection container. It is a time-saver and a great way to kickstart your next WordPress plugin project, especially if you need to leverage modern PHP features in your plugin.

Plugin Check

Plugin Check is a testing tool that helps WordPress developers validate their plugins against WordPress.org’s standards and best practices. It automatically scans your plugin code for potential issues with security, performance, accessibility, and other requirements. It makes it easier to ensure that your plugin is ready for the official WordPress repository.

Typos

Typos is a spell-checking tool designed specifically for source code. It is fast and a pretty accurate tool that can handle extensive monorepos while maintaining low false positives. This tool is particularly useful for code review and pull request workflows, and I think it would be a great addition to your CI/CD pipeline.

Rector Laravel

Laravel Rector is a community-driven extension for Rector that helps automate code upgrades and refactoring in Laravel applications, including support for Laravel’s first-party packages like Cashier and Livewire.

PHPCTL

PHPCTL is a tool that allows you to manage and seamlessly switch between different PHP versions and extensions in your projects using containers. It provides several commands for creating new projects with PHP, running an REPL, and includes popular tools like Box, FrankenPHP, PHPCS, PHPUnit, RectorPHP, and a lot more. I think it makes PHP development workflows a lot smoother and more efficient.

PHP Insights

PHP Insights is a user-friendly static analysis tool that you can use to check code quality, architecture, and complexity in your PHP projects. It works seamlessly with popular frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and WordPress. I think it’s an overall handy tool that you can use to ensure your code stays reliable, maintainable, and clean.

Laravel Optimize Database

Laravel Optimize Database is a PHP package that helps improve SQLite database performance in Laravel applications through simple optimization tools. While it offers useful features, at the time of this writing, it’s still in development and not production-ready, so remember to back up your database before using it. Nonetheless, it’s a promising tool that can help you optimize your database performance.

Atomic CSS DevTools

Atomic CSS DevTools is a Chrome extension that transforms how developers work by displaying CSS rules in a more readable, non-atomic format. This tool makes CSS troubleshooting more intuitive and efficient, particularly for projects using atomic CSS like TailwindCSS and PandaCSS.

PHP OpenTelemetry

A PHP SDK for OpenTelemetry that helps developers monitor and analyze their PHP applications. It provides tools and APIs for collecting various telemetry data, including metrics, logs, and traces, which makes it easier to track and understand your application’s performance and behavior.

PrivateBin

PrivateBin is an open-source, minimalist online pastebin that ensures complete privacy by encrypting and decrypting data in the browser using 256-bit AES encryption. If you’d like to host your own pastebin-like service, where you can share sensitive or password-protected information online, PrivateBin is a great option that you can easily deploy on your server.

Action Repo Automator

The Action Repo Automator from 10up is a GitHub Action that allows you to automate common repository tasks, such as PR validation, labeling, issue management, and syncing branches. This GitHub Action can help you, especially in a team setup, to streamline workflows more efficiently.

TwigStan

TwigStan is a static analysis tool that helps developers find errors and improve code quality in Twig templates by leveraging PHPStan’s powerful analysis capabilities. This is a very handy tool that helps you catch issues in your Twig templates more efficiently during development.

API Platform for Laravel

An official package for API Platform that allows you to integrate it with your Laravel applications. It simplifies the process of building REST and GraphQL APIs in Laravel applications. It provides automatic documentation generation, supports multiple API standards, and includes features like OpenAPI, SwaggerUI, and JSON-LD support out of the box.

CodeQL

CodeQL is GitHub’s powerful code analysis tool that allows you to write queries to scan your codebase for issues and report potential problems such as security flaws or bugs. CodeQL supports multiple languages, including JavaScript and Java, and can be easily integrated with your CI/CD pipeline to automate code analysis. It’s a great tool to ensure your code is secure and reliable.

Maizzle

Maizzle is a framework for building responsive HTML emails using TailwindCSS. It streamlines email development with features like CSS inlining and minification, making it quick and easy to create optimized emails. Perfect for developers familiar with Tailwind, it speeds up email design without sacrificing control or flexibility.