Forem: Martin Jirasek

A Simple Trick to Organize Your PHP Collections Effectively

Martin Jirasek — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:08:26 +0000

This is our Bag class — and yes, we absolutely love its simplicity 🥰

class Bag
{
    public function __construct(public array $items = []) {}
}

HOW TO WORK WITH IT?

The long way (a.k.a. “why make it simple?”)

Create collection objects
Insert them into another collection
Fill them with items

$bagA = new Bag();
$bagB = new Bag();

$preparedObjects = [];
$preparedObjects[] = $bagA;
$preparedObjects[] = $bagB;

$bagA->items[] = 'Bag A item 1';
$bagA->items[] = 'Bag A item 2';

$bagB->items[] = 'Bag B item 1';
$bagB->items[] = 'Bag B item 2';

The simpler way (clean, elegant, instant 😌)

Create and insert objects right away
Then just fill them

$preparedObjects = [
    $bagA = new Bag(),
    $bagB = new Bag(),
];

$bagA->items[] = 'Bag A item 1';
$bagA->items[] = 'Bag A item 2';

$bagB->items[] = 'Bag B item 1';
$bagB->items[] = 'Bag B item 2';

🎯 When Failure Isn’t Final: Meet failure-retry-executor

Martin Jirasek — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 07:55:22 +0000

Imagine a world where a function fails — and you can just send it back into action, no whining, no reinventing the wheel. That’s exactly what failure-retry-executor does: it retries your command until you tell it “okay, stop that” (default max attempts: 3).

Zarganwar/failure-retry-executor

How it works?

You wrap your risky command in execute(fn() => …).
If something goes wrong (an exception, or a falsereturn), the executor picks itself up, blinks, and tries again.
If it succeeds — voilà! — your onSuccesscallback runs.
If all tries fail? The onFailurecallback gets fired — perfect moment for logging, cursing softly, or both.
And yes — you can configure how many retries you want.

Where it shines

When talking to flaky external APIs that sometimes just decide they’re having a bad day.
In operations where occasional failure isn’t the end of the world — it’s just part of the dance.
When you want a clean retry mechanism instead of a tangled while (retries--) { … } mess.

An example for inspiration

Zarganwar\FailureRetryExecutor\FailureRetryExecutor::execute(
    command: fn() => $client->get('https://api.example.com/data'),
    maxAttempts: 5,
    onSuccess: fn($response) => print("Hooray, we got the data!"),
    onFailure: fn(Throwable $e) => error_log("Ugh, still failing: {$e->getMessage()}")
);

In closing

Failure is not the end — it’s just a nudge to try again. And if it doesn’t work even after three (or five) tries, at least you’ve got an elegant way to shut it down gracefully. 😄
If you like clean, simple, clever solutions, give failure-retry-executor a spin.

Just try it 🤗
Zarganwar/failure-retry-executor

👋

Human readable big numbers in PHP

Martin Jirasek — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:02:37 +0000

You’ve probably encountered situations where you need to write out a large number, and the longer it gets, the harder it is to tell how many digits it actually has. Is 130000000 equal to 13 million, 130 million, or 1.3 billion? At first glance, it’s a mess.

$number = 130000000    // This number is 😐?

One alternative is to use exponential notation, which makes the magnitude clear:

$number = 130e6    // immediately obvious: 130 million 🤘

But for numbers like 133456115, writing it as 133.456115e6 starts to feel counterproductive.

Starting with PHP 7.4, there’s a handy new syntax: the numeric literal separator. You can sprinkle underscores into your numbers to improve readability, just like you would in a miliseconds or any other long number that you want to ready clearly:

$number = 130_000_000;    // 🤩 WOW, that’s clearly 130 million!

The underscores don’t change the value or the type:

var_dump(130_000_000 === 130000000);     // true  (integer === integer)
var_dump(130_000_000.000 === 130000000); // false (float   !== integer)

See the RFC for more details:
PHP RFC

PS: JavaScript supports a similar feature!

PHP in Docker container for begginers as simple as possible 🎈

Martin Jirasek — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 09:49:50 +0000

I would like to target this article at beginners because I haven’t been able to find a proper article about a simple container for PHP. I want to give a heads-up to nitpickers in advance that I’m focusing only on the simplest approach.
Please note that I am working on Windows, but aside from a few minor details, the process is the same on macOS or Linux.

The premise is to have Docker installed. I won’t cover this in the article, as it depends on your operating system. However, it’s not too complicated.

Additionally, I have one recommendation for Windows users: use WSL2. The instructions are available Microsoft: How to install Linux on Windows with WSL, and based on my experience, installation is just a matter of following a few commands from the page. If you carefully follow the steps one by one, you’ll get it done successfully.

If everything is ready, we can dive in.

Start Docker
- Icon that indicates whether the Docker is running
Launch your favorite PHP editor/IDE – I'm using IntelliJ PHPStorm
Create a new project. I place project into Ubuntu directories (see the WSL2 installation above)
- I created mine in the following directory: \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\development\docker-php-simple
In the project directory, create the following files and folder structure
Now, let's add content to these three files:
- public/index.php: Prepare a nice piece of code that welcomes you :-)

<?php

echo 'Hello, Developer!';

.docker/apache/sites-available/000-default.conf: A simple configuration that specifies the default directory of our website

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/public"
</VirtualHost>

docker-compose.yml: Configuration settings for the Docker containers

services:
  app:
    image: php:8.4-apache
    container_name: docker-php-simple
    tty: true
    volumes:
      # Mount the current directory to the /var/www/html directory in the container
      # It means that the files in the current directory (./) will be available in the container at /var/www/html
      - ./:/var/www/html
      # Apache configuration file for the virtual host
      - ./.docker/apache/sites-available/000-default.conf:/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
#    working_dir: /var/www/html
    ports:
      # Your web server will be available at http://localhost:8080
      - "8080:80"

Let's get it running!

Follow these steps based on your preferred method:

Option 1: Using the Docker Plugin in Your Editor

Open the docker-compose.yml file in your editor.
Look for the double arrows (in PHPStorm) (▶︎▶︎) in the interface and click them.

This will start your Docker containers. The starting process and result is visible in IDE's console.

Option 2: Using a Terminal

Open your terminal (e.g., Git Bash, Command Prompt, or any terminal you prefer).
Navigate to your project directory
Run the following command to start the containers:

   docker-compose up -d

Once the containers are up, your application should be running.

You can open the Docker application, and you should see a running container with your application, named docker-php-simple.

If everything is set up correctly, the container should have a "Running" status, and you can manage it directly from the Docker dashboard, such as stopping, restarting, or inspecting logs if needed. 🎉

And as the grand finale, here is our application in action! 🎉

Check it in your browser by accessing the appropriate URL http://localhost:8080/. 🚀

You should see your welcome message Hello, Developer!

Automate Symfony EventSubscriberInterface::getSubscribedEvents()

Martin Jirasek — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 13:39:37 +0000

Do you like Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface and it's getSubscribedEvents() method?

class AwesomeSubscriber implements Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface
{

    public static function getSubscribedEvents(): array
    {
        return [
            HappyEvent::class => 'happy',
            CoolEvent::class => 'cool',
        ];
    }

    public function happy(HappyEvent $event): void {}

    public function cool(CoolEvent $event): void {}

}

I hate it!

Array with textual method name representation
Event class-name written multiple times 😑

Yes, new Symfony has attribute #[AsEventListener], but what if you use another framework or older version of event-dispatcher or you don't like attributes?

There is simple solution 💥
See this trait https://github.com/Zarganwar/symfony-event-dispatcher-utils.
That provides you with a simple (automatic) way to subscribe to events to __invoke method.

class AwesomeSubscriber implements Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface
{
    use AutoEventSubscriberTrait; // <<<--- This is it! ❤️

    public function __invoke(HappyEvent|CoolEvent $event): void {}

}

or subscriber per event

class HappySubscriber implements Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface
{
    use AutoEventSubscriberTrait;

    public function __invoke(HappyEvent $event): void {}

}

class CoolSubscriber implements Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface
{
    use AutoEventSubscriberTrait;

    public function __invoke(CoolEvent $event): void {}

}

Of course, you can use interfaces and union types.

Go to https://github.com/Zarganwar/symfony-event-dispatcher-utils and install

composer require zarganwar/symfony-event-dispatcher-utils

Enjoy! 🎉

PHP snippet #008

Martin Jirasek — Wed, 31 May 2023 09:01:57 +0000

// Hello types and keywords
echo (bool)+(null)+(int)+(float)+(string)+(double)+(null)+(false)+(true)+(bool)(array)(exit);

PHP snippet #007

Martin Jirasek — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 12:21:23 +0000

$stairs = [];

$stairs['_'] = '👾';
$stairs[]['_'] = '👽';
$stairs[][]['_'] = '🤢';
$stairs[][][]['_'] = '🥴';
$stairs[][][][]['_'] = '😓';
$stairs[][][][][]['_'] = '😑';
$stairs[][][][][][]['_'] = '😗';
$stairs[][][][][][][]['_'] = '😎';

PHP snippet #006

Martin Jirasek — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 07:59:42 +0000

If you are very hungry and fridge is totally empty!

PHP Notice: Undefined index: FOOD in /mnt/data/html/public/index.php:314

PHP snippet #005

Martin Jirasek — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 13:29:05 +0000

$💲 = '💲';

PHP snippet #004

Martin Jirasek — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 08:51:58 +0000

From funny chat 🚀

    5--; // Is 4
    5++; // Is 6
    then 5**; // Is 25?
    And 5//; // Should be 1 but it's comment

B:
5** is fast comet with weight 5
5*** is faster

PHP snippet #003

Martin Jirasek — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 15:02:19 +0000

// Current Thai year
echo (int)date('Y') + 543;

PHP snippet #002

Martin Jirasek — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 08:52:38 +0000

// Ping pong
player_01:
    echo 'click ';
    goto player_02;

player_02:
    echo 'clack ';
    goto player_01;