It is crucial to keep up with the latest web development trends when managing your development team. Knowing about the latest technologies gives you the full advantage to leverage the quality of your services and improve your business performance.
What is PHP used for?
PHP is an open-source, general-purpose scripting language well-suited for web development and can also be used in many programming tasks outside of the context of web applications.
PHP can also be used to perform calculations, collect user information, interact with MySQL databases, create and edit graphics with the use of the GD Library, and work with cookies.
The versatility of PHP as a programming language is the reason why the PHP web development trends in 2019 are eagerly anticipated in the software development industry.
The top PHP web development trends in 2019
Accelerated Mobile Pages
AMP is an open-source library that offers a clear-cut method to create web pages that are fascinating, fluid, and load faster when a user opens them in desktop and mobile web browsers.
If your company website is developed in PHP, adding an AMP version of your site can increase the ranking of your business’s listing in online directories such as Yellowpages.com, Google, LinkedIn, and other directories.
Cloud integration
The integration or consolidation of practices, technologies, and tools that a business can use to link applications, data, systems, and IT environments. This integration is the real-time exchange of data and processes accessible using different devices through a local network or the Internet.
Websites and web applications developed from PHP could benefit from cloud integration because of the improved connectivity and optimized visibility of the website.
PHP developer teams located in different locations could also have improved the sharing of data and tasks for projects they are jointly working on.
IoT technology
Internet of Things is the constantly expanding network of physical devices or objects that can communicate and collaborate through the Internet while users remotely control and monitor them.
The communication and interaction between IoT-enabled devices can be efficiently implemented by the abilities of PHP for dynamic programming and faster coding. The PHP version 7 allows developers to effortlessly connect to the asynchronous programming for IoT that permits PHP code to do the multiple tasks of IoT-enabled devices.
User interface
Further improvement of the user interface is achieved through responsive websites that can be written in PHP. PHP developers can build responsive websites that have dynamic infographics, presentations, visual effects, and other dynamic features.
Mobile wallet
A virtual wallet that stores your credit and debit card information in a mobile wallet platform on your mobile device. A mobile wallet can pay for bills, products, and services in physical and online stores through mobile payment platforms such as Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Adyen, and Venmo.
However, the security of financial information stored in these online platforms is a recurring issue due to data breaches and hacking. This is where PHP comes in as a reliable online security system.
Since PHP can be used to develop Android and iOS apps, there could soon be a trend of PHP-based security systems being used for mobile payment platforms.
Combination of Java and PHP
You can use PHP and Java in the same app by using the PHP/Java Bridge which is the execution of a streaming XML-based network protocol that can be used to link a native script engine such as PHP to a Java virtual machine.
This technology has led various IT companies in starting to combine Java and PHP for developing web applications. Since Java is one of the most secure programming languages while PHP is one of the fastest, a Java and PHP combination can reduce the costs and time for upgrading web and mobile applications.
Smart chatbots
Did you know a PHP-based chatbot can be built in just 10 minutes? Chatbots are widely used in e-commerce, messaging apps, customer service and support, and other categories of conversational programs.
Some of the most popular chatbot development frameworks that are used for building chatbots are based on PHP. The continuing use of chatbots to save money and resources in hiring actual personal will continue in the coming years so it will be a trend to use PHP’s advantage as a powerful language for developing chatbots.
Trends in web frameworks for PHP development
Web frameworks are built to support the construction of Internet applications based on single programming languages such as PHP. It’s become essential for developers to use the latest PHP web development trends for frameworks because the more updated a framework is, the more they save time and resources in building a website.
The following are the latest trends for the top six PHP web frameworks:
Laravel
The Laravel 5.8.8 was released on March 27, 2019, together with a new query builder method, and the latest changes and fixes in the 5.8 revision. The new Builder::forPageBeforeId() method has been added to augment an existing forPageAftrtId().
The added methods are effective for the query of records before or after a given record. Other new features are:
- Laravel Horizon dashboard – a code-driven configuration dashboard for Redis queues
- Laravel Nova administration panel – well-designed and carefully crafted administration panel
- Laravel Echo event broadcasting – implementation of real-time and live updates of user interfaces with the use of WebSockets.
CodeIgniter
The CodeIgniter 3.1.10 was released on January 16, 2019, with only 2MB download including the user guide. It has additional bug fixes for database library, caching, forge and MySQL driver, form validation, session and XML-RPC libraries, and captcha helper.
All of these bug fixes have made version 3.1.10 a powerful framework with a small footprint and a simple but multi-functional toolkit for building full-featured web applications.
CakePHP
The CakePHP 3.7.0 was released on December 8, 2018. It has become the most robust version to date with several new features:
- Array Engine to help improve the test suite reliability and performance
- CakeHttpClient uses curl to provide improved performance and proxy features
- CakeValidationValidator has type-safe allow-empty methods
- FormHelper can set HTML5 custom validation messages
- IntegrationTestCase will make working with flash messages simpler.
Zend
In 2019, the Zend framework comes in two versions – Expressive version 2, and Zend version 3. Expressive v2’s benefits are making your code flexible and powerful by utilizing the dependency injection container of your choice.
It uses as many layers as you want for your middleware applications, using various templated engines for creating templated responses, and more efficient error handling with the use of templated error pages or your own solutions.
Zend v3 can run up to four times faster than v2, has an open architecture based on Middleware or MVC, and better security features by storing passwords through bcrypt or encryption with AES-256.
Phalcon
Released on March 31, 2018, version 4.0.0-Alpha 4 has further improved the beneficial features of Phalcon as an optimized and high-performance full-stack framework for PHP. Phalcon v4.0.0 has the lowest upkeep for MVC-based applications due to its low-level architecture and optimizations.
Symfony
The Symfony 4 was released on November 30, 2017, with 4.2.5 released on April 2019. It is one of the most powerful PHP web frameworks with abilities for automation, optimization, and stability. Version 4 can integrate smoothly with Symfony Flex to automate the most common functions done on applications.
Symfony 4 is based on a micro-kernel so it contains 70% less code and files, and has the smallest footprint across all PHP frameworks. It is built with updated Symfony Components which has one of the most popular sets of libraries in PHP.
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