Understand Error, Exception, and Throwable in PHP
Distinguish PHP Error and Exception objects, catch expected failures specifically, and reserve Throwable for application boundaries.
Choose ENT_SUBSTITUTE and ENT_DISALLOWED in PHP
Use PHP HTML escaping flags deliberately to replace malformed UTF-8 and document-type-disallowed code points without hiding input problems.
Iterate SimpleXML Safely Before Calling key()
Initialize a SimpleXML iterator before reading its key, or let foreach manage rewind, validity checks, and movement automatically.
Avoid Returning from PHP finally Blocks
Keep PHP finally blocks limited to cleanup so they do not replace a return value or suppress an exception already in flight.
Use Named Arguments with PHP Variadic Parameters
Understand how PHP stores named arguments in a variadic array and choose named or positional calls based on whether keys matter.
Handle Invalid UTF-8 with PHP grapheme_strlen()
Check the result of grapheme_strlen(), report ICU failures safely, and distinguish grapheme clusters from bytes and code points.
Validate Boolean Input with PHP filter_var() Correctly
Distinguish valid false values from invalid input when using FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN and FILTER_NULL_ON_FAILURE in PHP.
Handle Empty Arrays Before Calling PHP min() or max()
Prevent PHP ValueError exceptions by defining how an empty data set should behave before calling min() or max().
Diagnose MySQL Latency Before Archiving Old Rows
Measure expensive statements, execution plans, and lock waits before assuming that archiving old MySQL rows will fix application latency.
Validate TCP Port Numbers Before Opening PHP Sockets
Validate TCP ports as integers from 1 through 65535 before passing them to fsockopen() or stream_socket_client().