Posts

How to install and configure MySQL 8.0 on WSL 2 (Ubuntu), this guide assumes WSL 2 is already installed with Ubuntu.

VS Code with PHP and Xdebug 3 Xdebug 3 is an extremely powerful debugging tool for PHP. Although print_r(), var_dump() and dd() have their uses, Xdebug gives more powerful debugging options: step debugging allows the ability to view execution of each line of code, including the ability to view all variables and their values. Code coverage is useful to identify untested code, or code which is never executed (dead code).

The focus of this blog is to help set up PHP Projects in PhpStorm. I have also included snippets from my side-projects. I hope the information will be useful for other PHP projects. This is a follow-up to my blog Standard Setup for PHP projects from 2020.

I have been using Docker since I installed Pop!_OS On my laptop Oct 2020. I deliberately have not installed PHP, MySQL or Apache on my laptop, which has forced me to learn to use Docker! The first tutorial I followed was the Docker docs get started after I installed Docker. I found this to be a useful introduction, even though I wanted a PHP environment, the guide still explained the basics of Docker.

I have recently configured my windows 10 laptop with an additional SSD, so I could experiment with Linux. I have already installed Pop!_OS Git, PhpStorm and Docker. I haven’t installed PHP or Composer locally. Next I want to learn how to use this new environment. This is what I have found out so far.

I wanted to test out Linux after I had purchased a new laptop which came with Windows 10 home. Although I was generally happy with my dev environment, I still wanted to try out Linux as a dev environment. I chose to try Pop OS as it was recommended by several people, especially on the PHPUgly and Syntax podcasts.

One of the things that have helped me to learn software development using PHP is coding Katas. I especially enjoyed the Katas by Emily Bache on Github. They offer a safe sandbox environment to play with code and tools. They have good, or should that be not so good, starting code to self-teach techniques for refactoring, testing and object orientated code. In fact, I enjoyed them so much, I have contributed to them!

I have recently started a new job as a software developer, the tech stack includes a content management system (CMS) called Silverstripe. I therefore wanted to learn the Silverstripe CMS. The initial process of creating a project should be straight forward, there are supposed to be beginner lessons. The first three lessons on how to set up a silverstripe project are confusing, as there is intermixed talk about upgrading from Silverstripe v3.

I have recently purchased a new laptop with Windows 10 home edition, after some research I found out that Docker will now run on Windows 10 home.

Some links from my recent learning about Git.

Note: This is my standard setup from 2020, a newer version from 2021 is now available Standard setup for PHP projects 2021. The focus of this post if to setup PHP and PhpStorm in a consistant way for each project, with coding standards, static analysis and tests.

I’ve been interested in creating my own blog website for a while. I regularly create documentation in markdown and wanted an easy way to create a blog using markdown. This post explains my research and setup for Hexo.