Symfony Station logo
Here's our latest newsletter that Explores the Symfony Universe.
View this in your browser.
website custom custom 
Once again, as a perk for joining our list, you receive The Payload a day earlier than the weekly Symfony Station communiqué. But still, check the site tomorrow for the latest developments.

As you know, we share a lot of information so we recommend viewing this email in your browser via the link above.
Welcome to this week's edition of The Payload. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy.

There's good content in all of our categories, so please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you.

This is why we publish on Thursdays. So you can savor it over your weekend.

Or scroll down to your favorite section.

Once again, thanks go out to Javier Eguiluz and the team at Symfony for sharing our communiqué in their Week of Symfony.

My opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros.

Symfony Logo

Symfony

As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony.

Highlight -> This week, the upcoming Symfony 7.3 version updated its default configuration to exclude container extensions, entities and messenger messages when registering services, and made some changes related to resetting services. In addition, Symfony celebrated the SymfonyDay Chicago 2025 conference with great success.
March 17–23, 2025 A Week of Symfony #951

They also have:
A newsletter
New Core Team Member, Symfony CLI
SymfonyLive Berlin 2025 starts in a week!

Upsun has:
Decouple your Symfony frontend using Next.js
Nothing personal but just FYI, when you use AI generated images it makes you look unprofessional, incompetent, and uncool.

SensiLabs has:
Symfony and AI: the video is now available

Featured Item

SensioLabs writes:
2025 is going to be a big year for anniversaries. We will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Symfony, the 30th anniversary of PHP, the 25th anniversary of AFUP and the 10th anniversary of API Platform. For SensioLabs, this is a major milestone that proves the longevity of the technologies in our ecosystem. We are proud to celebrate these anniversaries with the community all year long.
2025: a year of anniversaries for PHP, AFUP, Symfony and API Platform

This week

Andrew Markhai shows us:
How Symfony Flex Works
Roman Huliak has:
PHP Dependency Injection: Best Practices, Real Examples, and Symfony Implementation
Using Immutable Types in PHP
Tideways announces:
Tideways 2025.1 Release

How To
LaurentMN has:
Advanced Comparison: PHP-CS-Fixer vs PHPStan in Symfony Projects — Which One Do You Need?
Advanced Use of Elasticsearch in Your Dockerized Symfony Project
Optimizing Real-Time Communication in Symfony: Advanced Mercure Integration Strategies
Mayur Koshti has:
Database Abstraction (DBAL) in Symfony: A Deep Dive

Other

Mautic announces:
Mautic 6.0: Orion Edition is released

eCommerce

Shopware has:
Shopware 6.7 Release Candidate 1 – now available
BitExpert explores:
Extending a Twig Component in Sylius 2.0

CMSs

TYPO3 has:
HOPPECKE Introduces B2B Portal to Improve Automation and User Experience
2024 in Review: The TYPO3 Localization Team’s Year of Progress

Drupal has:
DrupalPod + Drupal Forge
It's good to see this becoming more official.
DrupalCon Unveils Collaboration with SixEleven for a Bold New Look
Update to releases on project pages
Wim Leers shares:
Experience Builder: XB at DrupalCon Atlanta 2025
Evolving Web examines:
DrupalCon 2025 Atlanta: DriesNote Highlights and What’s Next for Drupal CMS
Good to see there will be a code editor in Experience Builder for custom Drupal blocks.
Droptica has:
How to Build an Inclusive Website? Drupal Accessibility Tips and Tricks
How to Convince the Board to Choose Drupal? Seven Business and Financial Arguments
Drupal Mountain Camp has a:
Drupal Mountain Camp 2025 Wrap-Up
Specbee looks at:
SmartLinker AI for Drupal: An AI-powered internal linking tool for smarter content
I can see this for very large sites.
Morpht explores:
Enhancing your theme with dynamic colour palettes in a Drupal theme
Metadrop introduces:
VLSuite: web pages in record time
Just wait till Drupal CMS has Experience Builder built in. Or use regular Drual with the Gutenberg editor now.
Drunomics explains:
Why we don't use GraphQL
Evolving Web shares:
What I Wish I Knew When Starting with Drupal

Previous Weeks

Mickael Bordage examines:
Building a RAG-Powered AI with Symfony and Elasticsearch
My Florida DrupalCamp buddy, Carlos Ospina has:
Rebuilding Drupal's Ecosystem Pyramid: A Path to Sustainable Growth
Creating Real Business Value: Transforming Drupal.org into a Genuine Business Hub
PHP logo

PHP

This week

Laravel News shows us how to:
Create Self-Contained PHP Executables with PHPacker
David Duymelinck looks at:
Moving from ORM models to Domain Driven Design aggregates
Takeshi Yu explores:
Composer Linker: The npm link for PHP Developers
Roman Huliak finishes a series:
Boost Your PHP Performance: A General Overview of Faster Function Alternatives (Part 4/4)
Antonio Silva looks at:
PHP PSRs : PSR-4 Autoloader
Derick Rethans explores:
Unicode Collation Sorting
Jhonatan Morais continues a series:
How to start using gRPC with PHP - Part 3/4
Inspector has:
AI Agents in PHP with MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Elminson De Oleo Baez examines:
Trait and Classes Hacking: Customizing Package Libraries with PHP Traits and Classes
Dagger X announces:
Security Redefined: Introducing DaggerX V3.0.0 for Unbreakable PHP Protection
Zend looks at:
PHP Vulnerabilities: Assessment, Prevention, and Mitigation
Code logo

More Programming

TetraLogical explores:
Understanding the European Accessibility Act (EAA)
Tihomir Manushev show us how to:
Replace Redis with PostgreSQL
Lorna Jane examines:
Right-Size Your RESTful API: More Flexibility Without GraphQL
Terence Eden shows us how to:
Create a Table of Contents based on HTML Heading Elements
CSS Tricks says:
Support Logical Shorthands in CSS

Battalion logo

Fighting for Democracy (sponsored by Battalion)


Here we feature several items from each section of Battalion's weekly "Defending Democracy" report.

Get all the news from the front of democracy's battle against autocracy via its latest "Defending Democracy" post. And please follow Battalion via RSS or on the Fediverse at @battalion@battalion.mobileatom.net. Or even Bluesky if that floats your boat.
Please visit Symfony Stations Support Ukraine page to learn how you can help kick Russia out of Ukraine (eventually, like ending apartheid in South Africa).

The cyber response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

In news sure to make Cory Doctorow happy, Tech Policy reports:
Interoperability in the EU: A Judgment Opens the Door
The Register reports:
OTF, which backs Tor, Let's Encrypt and more, sues to save funding from Trump cuts
Wired reports:
How to Avoid US-Based Digital Services—and Why You Might Want To

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

The Verge asks:
Is it safe to travel with your phone right now?
It's not safe to travel to the U.S. period. Or even within it by air.
MIT Technology Review reports:
Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake

Cybersecurity/Privacy

404 Media reports:
When Your Threat Model Is Being a Moron
You Need to Use Signal's Nickname Feature
The Verge reports:
Vivaldi bundles Proton VPN into its web browser
Fediverse Explorer logo

The Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:
Fediverse Report – #109
Fedihost has some how to videos:
Creating A GoToSocial Instance on FediHost
Configuring A PeerTube Instance

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

TechCrunch reports:
A world without Caesars: How the ATProto community is rebuilding the web to return power to the people
Hmm. Are they really?

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

Do you own or work for an organization that would be interested in our promotion opportunities? If so, please get in touch with us. We’re in our infancy, so it’s extra economical. 😉

More importantly, if you are a Ukrainian company with coding-related products, we can offer free promotion on our Support Ukraine page. Or, if you know of one, get in touch.


Symfony Station and The Payload cover the essential news in the Symfony, PHP, and Fediverse development communities with a focus on protecting democracy. Please use the button above to make a small donation to help cover our out-of-pocket costs. Our labor is provided free of charge to support the communities we write about.

You may have to open the link in a new window. Thanks.

Please share this!
Did someone forward this edition to you? Find in on the Fediverse? Please subscribe to The Payload.
website custom custom 
Email Marketing Powered by MailPoet