I have always struggled with how packages are versioned and published to the npm registry.
My main concern is that you probably want to also add a git tag to your source code when you are releasing a new version, but npm packages have their own versioning system, and include a &quot;version&quot; field in the package.json
Because of this, most of the workflows I have seen, usually involve:
<ol>
<li>Running <code>npm version ...</code>. This will update the &quot;version&quot; field in the package.json file.</li>
<li>Publishing the package to the npm registry, using the version set in previous step.</li>
<li>Committing to git, so that we track the change in package.json file.</li>
<li>Adding a git tag.</li>
<li>Pushing to git remote to track new commit and new tag.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
Steps 3 and 4 are frequently done automatically as part of <code>npm version</code>.
</blockquote>
For me this flow has two main problems:
<ul>
<li>
My personal preference is that everything is driven by git tags, making them the single source of truth.
This would allow to just have one manual step -&gt; <code>git tag -a v1.0.0 -m &quot;...&quot; &amp;&amp; git push origin --tags</code>. Then, this would trigger a number of potential automations, including publishing to the npm registry, but also others like creating a release with the appropriate release notes, building release artifacts, etc.
</li>
<li>
The &quot;version&quot; field in the package.json file can very easily become outdated, if you git-tag by mistake before publishing the package, or if pushing the changes fails after <code>npm version ...</code> has been run.
I&#x27;ve seen this happening more often than it seems.
</li>
</ul>
Because of this, my current take when publishing npm packages for my personal projects is:
<ol>
<li>
Get rid of the &quot;version&quot; field from the package.json file. It&#x27;s misleading in source code, as it can very easily be out of date.
The only case where it&#x27;s useful is when the package has been installed and is inside node_modules, as other packages will assume this field to exist and have the right value on it.
In this case it&#x27;s always going to be correct due to the<code>npm version ...</code> + <code>npm publish</code> tandem (see next point).
</li>
<li>
Creating the git tag is the only &quot;manual step&quot;. This triggers an automation running <code>npm version ${GIT_TAG} --git-tag-version=false &amp;&amp; npm publish</code> (this is simplified. You probably also need to build your project and other potential extra steps).
The version to publish is inferred from the git tag (<code>${GIT_TAG}</code> is just a placeholder), and only at this stage we will set the &quot;version&quot; inside package.json, just before the package is published.
</li>
<li>
Other automations that need to happen during releases, can be also triggered now, like publishing release notes, building artifacts, etc.
</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
As an example, you can see <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/shlinkio/github-actions/blob/24de7a2b89a9eb11b0acfd184de7187698b051b6/.github/workflows/js-lib-publish.yml">this GitHub actions workflow</a>, which follows this approach.
</blockquote>

I have always struggled with how packages are versioned and published to the npm registry. My main concern is that you probably want to also add a git tag to your source code when you are releasing a new version, but npm packages have their own versioning system, and include a "version" field in…

My current take when publishing packages to the npm registry

A couple of weeks ago I migrated a React project using redux to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/">Redux Toolkit</a>.
Redux has always been my preferred state management tool for React (which doesn&#x27;t mean I &quot;love&quot; it), but one of its main problems is the amount of boilerplate code it requires.
Because of that I had a couple of helper functions, but there was still some things not properly handled, like proper type inference on reducers and actions (I use TypeScript).
A bit by accident (I think it was on Twitter), I found out about Redux Toolkit (RTK from now on), an official library from the redux team, which provides some opinionated helpers to reduce the amount of boilerplate, and I decided to give it a chance.
These are my impressions.
<h3>TL;DR</h3>
I first started to use it in a proof of concept, and I quickly loved it.
RTK does not &quot;replace&quot; any of the redux principles, so you can progressively adopt it, by replacing small bits of code. My plan was to use it just for some reducers, but I liked it so much that I ended up migrating the whole project in a series of consecutive pull requests.
<h3>A bit of context</h3>
Before the migration, I used to follow the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/erikras/ducks-modular-redux">ducks modular pattern</a>, which promotes putting all your action types, action creators and the reducer handling those actions on the same module.
This fits pretty well with RTK, as in most of the cases you will use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createSlice">slices</a>, and end up exporting the reducer and action creators returned by it, from the same module.
If you use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createAsyncThunk">async thunks</a>, they usually need to be used by that same slice, so it&#x27;s not a bad idea to export them also from there.
<h3>Why I love it</h3>
There are a couple of reasons for which I loved RTK right away. The main one is that they make an impressive work on making type inference in TypeScript work properly.
<ul>
<li>Slices detect the type of the initial state in order to know what is expected to be passed as <code>state</code> to reducers.</li>
<li>You can infer the type of your store from what is generated by <code>configureStore</code> or <code>combineReducers</code> functions, allowing you to also properly type the <code>dispatch</code> function.</li>
<li>Action creators are generated with the proper param types based on the reducers provided to <code>createSlice</code> or the callback provided to <code>createAsyncThunk</code>.</li>
<li><code>createSlice</code> can consume all the action creators generated by <code>createAsyncThunk</code>, and infer the proper payload for each one of them.</li>
</ul>
Thanks to this, the code is super predictable and potential bugs can be caught sooner.
<blockquote>
More details on how to use RTK with typescript https://redux-toolkit.js.org/usage/usage-with-typescript
</blockquote>
But this is not the only benefit. Other reasons that make it very nice to work with are:
<ul>
<li>It keeps the same concepts from Redux, but removing the boilerplate or your own helper functions if you have them (yes, I didn&#x27;t want to keep all those <code>switch</code> statements everywhere).</li>
<li>It is mostly transparent for the components dispatching the actions or consuming the state.</li>
<li>All the tests covering your reducers/actions/components should keep passing, as the outcome from RTK is the same as if you built everything manually.</li>
<li>It introduces a couple of extra helpers, like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/rtk-query/overview">RTK query</a> or the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createListenerMiddleware">listener middleware</a>, which is very useful to dispatch actions as a result of other actions being dispatched.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Challenges I found</h3>
Of course, adopting a new tool always comes with some challenges.
The main &quot;problem&quot; I found is that RTK is a bit opinionated, but that&#x27;s precisely how they manage to reduce boilerplate code, and it&#x27;s also &quot;advertised&quot; in their website, so not a big surprise.
I usually prefer to be in control of everything (configuration over convention), but that&#x27;s just a personal preference, and sometimes it&#x27;s ok to accept a bit of magic for the sake of simplicity.
This caused the next challenges for my particular case:
<ul>
<li>
RTK assumes your project follows a strict <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux.js.org/tutorials/fundamentals/part-7-standard-patterns#flux-standard-actions">Flux pattern</a>, meaning your actions always have the properties <code>type</code>, <code>payload</code> and optionally <code>meta</code> and <code>error</code>.
I was not following this pattern (my actions had the payload &quot;mixed&quot; on the first object level), so I had to adapt all my actions first, fix the tests, then migrate the reducer to RTK and make sure the tests kept passing.
<div></div>
</li>
<li>
Immutability is no longer promoted in reducers. Instead, the library requires <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://immerjs.github.io/immer/">immer</a> internally, and using proxies they automatically ensure immutability, even if you &quot;mutate&quot; the state.
This feels a bit counterintuitive at first, because redux always promoted an immutable approach, and the use of immer is not obvious.
However, they have <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/usage/immer-reducers#why-immer-is-built-in">good reasons</a> to do it, and if your reducers return a state object, you can still use the immutable approach. It&#x27;s up to you.
<div></div>
</li>
<li>
Action creators resulting of <code>createAsyncThunk</code> can only have one argument.
This is because the async thunk callback receives a second argument containing the <code>dispatch</code> and <code>getState</code> functions, as well as a couple of other goodies, enforcing this convention to avoid human errors.
<div></div>
</li>
<li>
You cannot dispatch other actions after the callback passed to <code>createAsyncThunk</code>, because it has to return the payload and RTK dispatches the action for you.
However, this is probably something you usually should not be doing, and in my case, I resolved it with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createListenerMiddleware">listener middleware</a>, listening for the second action in order to dispatch the second one.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
My conclusion is that RTK is definitely worth it if you use redux.
It makes code simpler, more predictable and better typed. However, it still requires knowing how redux works internally and what are its patterns, in order to understand why the library exposes the helpers it exposes and why.
For existing redux projects, you can migrate progressively, addressing the challenges bit by bit and not all at once, which simplifies its adoption.
For new projects in which you want to use redux, I would recommend starting right away with RTK.

A couple of weeks ago I migrated a React project using redux to Redux Toolkit. Redux has always been my preferred state management tool for React (which doesn't mean I "love" it), but one of its main problems is the amount of boilerplate code it requires.

Because of that I had a couple of helper…

My experience migrating to Redux Toolkit (RTK)

In 2019, GitHub published their own solution to run automated workflows called GitHub Actions, which allowed those hosting their code in GitHub, to be able to define and run their CI/CD pipelines in the same platform. When it was released, one of the main pain points to use it was that defining…

How to reduce duplication in your GitHub Actions workflows

Recently ReactJS v18 was released. I started to look into its improvements, and checked which of my projects could benefit from them.
The main react-based project I maintain at the moment of writing this article is <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/shlinkio/shlink-web-client">shlink-web-client</a>, so I naturally created a new branch and started the process.
The update was quite smooth, as most of the other dependencies I was using from the react ecosystem were already updated to support v18. All but one, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://enzymejs.github.io/enzyme/">enzyme</a>, the testing framework I was using to unit-test react components.
To be precise, I was able to continue running my tests, but some of them (those using <code>mount</code> instead of <code>shallow</code>) were still rendering components with the &quot;old&quot; React v17 approach, causing them to behave as in that version and a warning being printed in the console.
<h3>First fix attempt</h3>
The way enzyme integrates with the react version you are using is through an adapter library. The last official one supports only React v16, but someone released an <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/wojtekmaj/enzyme-adapter-react-17">unofficial adapter for v17</a> which, with close to 650k weekly downloads, quickly became the way to go.
I checked if there was one for React 18, but sadly there wasn&#x27;t.
Also, the author of the adapter for v17 posted an article indicating <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://dev.to/wojtekmaj/enzyme-is-dead-now-what-ekl">enzyme is dead</a>, he was not going to release one for v18, and publishing one for v17 was a mistake.
With those facts in mind, I started to face what was probably going to be the moment to migrate to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://testing-library.com/docs/react-testing-library/intro">react testing library</a>.
<h3>Migration strategy</h3>
I decided to follow a migration strategy similar to the one suggested in the article above, but with a couple of modifications:
<ul>
<li>I update to React 18 anyway, as tests still pass.</li>
<li>Migrate right away all tests using <code>mount</code>, as those are the ones behaving differently.</li>
<li>New tests should be written directly with react testing library (RTL from now on).</li>
<li>When an existing test needs to be changed, consider migrating it to RTL, and do it if there&#x27;s time.</li>
<li>Introduce some PR from time to time just migrating a handful of tests.</li>
<li>Once everything is migrated, get rid of everything related with enzyme.</li>
</ul>
<h3>First contact and impressions</h3>
I was a bit sceptical with RTL, as it was focused more on integration tests, instead of unit tests, which meant I had to completely change the mindset to write tests.
It also didn&#x27;t support shallow rendering, meaning that you will end up sometimes rendering a bigger component tree when testing container-like components, potentially causing side effects that could affect your test.
On the other hand there&#x27;s more and more people stating that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kentcdodds.com/blog/why-i-never-use-shallow-rendering">shallow rendering is an anti-pattern</a>, and that&#x27;s probably the reason of enzyme getting &quot;discontinued&quot;.
Also, RTL has become the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://reactjs.org/docs/testing.html#tools">officially recommended framework</a> to test react components, it has become very popular, and it has even joined a wider group of testing libraries under the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://testing-library.com/"><code>@testing-library</code></a> organization.
The thing is that I started to use it, and I was quickly surprised with how it felt to work with it, and all the benefits it was bringing to my tests.
<h3>Benefits I have experienced</h3>
Once I started migrating the first tests I noticed some benefits:
<ul>
<li>Changing my mindset was actually easier than I thought. The docs are very well written, so it&#x27;s relatively easy to start using RTL.</li>
<li>My tests got simpler, and required less of those nasty global mocks that jest allows (I&#x27;m looking at you, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://jestjs.io/es-ES/docs/mock-functions#mocking-modules"><code>jest.mock</code></a>).</li>
<li>Tests were way less coupled with implementation details. I moved from testing the component props, to test what the user would see on the screen.</li>
<li>Related with previous point, I started to write my tests by looking at the screen instead of the component&#x27;s implementation.</li>
<li>Changes in source code led to fewer tests requiring to be changed.</li>
<li>A progressive migration was possible, where some tests still use enzyme and others are already using RTL.</li>
</ul>
And overall, it felt good and I have already dedicated a couple of PRs just to migrate more tests.
<h3>Challenges I faced</h3>
But of course, migrating to a new tool always comes with its own challenges, and this was not an exception. I&#x27;ll explain the main ones I have faced so far and how I tackled them:
<ul>
<li>
RTL lets you do some things in a couple of different ways, and the docs may not be super clear about what&#x27;s the recommended option.
For this I recommend reading <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acel.me/DCMb1">this article</a> from Kent C. Dodds, RTL&#x27;s author, which explains some common mistakes when using the library.
</li>
<li>
At first, I struggled a bit with asynchronous side effects and state changes in components, which can easily end up printing a warning like <code>Warning: An update to MyComponent inside a test was not wrapped in act</code>.
The warning also explains how you are supposed to solve this by wrapping your code in <code>act()</code>, but this warning comes from React, not RTL, and what it is not telling you is that RTL already wraps all needed operations in <code>act()</code>.
What this error usually mean is that you are not waiting for something to happen. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://acel.me/jnUdT">This other article</a>, also from Kent C. Dodds, explains everything you need to know about the things that can lead to this warning, and how to solve them.
</li>
<li>
Since you start testing from the user point of view, some use cases can be challenging to test without coupling with implementation details. For example, when you have a component which dynamically renders different images or icons, I used to directly check the component properties.
For this I found the best solution was to use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://jestjs.io/docs/snapshot-testing">jest snapshots</a>. I didn&#x27;t want to manually check which SVG was being rendered in the DOM, just that different ones were being used in every case.
<pre class="language-tsx"><code class="language-tsx">// I went from this...
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const wrapper = shallow(&lt;MyComp dynamicValue=&quot;foo&quot; /&gt;);
 expect(wrapper.find(FontAwesomeIcon).prop(&#x27;icon&#x27;)).toEqual(someIcon);
})

// To this
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const { container } = render(&lt;MyComp dynamicValue=&quot;foo&quot; /&gt;);
 expect(container.firstChild).toMatchSnapshot();
})
</code></pre>
</li>
<li>
Something very similar happens if you use some library that renders canvas. There&#x27;s no way to test that from a DOM point of view, which is what RTL does.
In my case I was using <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.chartjs.org/">Chart.js</a> to render some charts, so I used <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/hustcc/jest-canvas-mock">jest-canvas-mock</a>, which exposes a method on the canvas to see which are all the events invoked from the library.
Then I used snapshots again to verify they had the expected &quot;shape&quot;.
<pre class="language-tsx"><code class="language-tsx">// I went from this...
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const wrapper = shallow(&lt;MyCompWithCanvas /&gt;);
 expect(wrapper.find(Chart).prop(&#x27;data&#x27;).datasets).toEqual(...);
})

// To this
test(&#x27;...&#x27;, () =&gt; {
 const { container } = render(&lt;MyCompWithCanvas /&gt;);
 const events = container.querySelector(&#x27;canvas&#x27;)?.getContext(&#x27;2d&#x27;)?.__getEvents();

 expect(events).toBeTruthy();
 expect(events).toMatchSnapshot();
})
</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
For better or worst, enzyme should no longer be considered an option. If you are starting a new project or are using it on small ones, consider migrating to RTL as soon as possible.
If you are using it in bigger projects, following the process described in this article will probably help you.
In any case, you will get surprised. React testing library is a great tool and provides many benefits over enzyme.
Its main issue is that it&#x27;s not a drop-in replacement for enzyme, so you will have to change a bit your mindset.

Recently ReactJS v18 was released. I started to look into its improvements, and checked which of my projects could benefit from them. The main react-based project I maintain at the moment of writing this article is shlink-web-client, so I naturally created a new branch and started the process.

The…

My experience migrating from enzyme to react testing library

Capturing code coverage for a test suite is a very useful way to know which parts of your source code are actually getting executed by tests. This is useful not only to know if you need to add more tests to your project (in case the coverage is too low), but also, if you want to apply technics like…

Capturing remote code coverage in API tests with PHPUnit

Earlier last week I found a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/WyriHaximus/awesome-phpstorm">github repository</a> which collects different resources related with PhpStorm. Plugins, themes, utilities...
I found it very interesting, because I think <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/">PhpStorm</a> is the best PHP IDE by far, and I&#x27;ve been using it on an almost daily basis for the last 4 years.
The thing is that finding that repository gave me the idea of writing a post explaining the list of third party plugins I use and why, in case somebody is starting to use the IDE and wants some ideas on where to start.
If you want to get any of them, just search for it inside PhpStorm. It&#x27;s the easiest way to install them.
<h3>.env</h3>
If you work with env files in your development process, either with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/vlucas/phpdotenv">vlucas/phpdotenv</a> (which comes bundled with laravel) or with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/dotenv.html">symfony/dotenv</a>, this extension is very handy.
It autocompletes environment variables defined in the .env file and the docker-compose.yml file when using the <code>env()</code> or <code>getenv()</code> functions.
It also displays the value defined for those env variables inside the file.
<img src="/assets/img/phpstorm-plugins/dot-env.png" alt=".env"/>
<blockquote>
As a tip I will say that the first time I installed this plugin it didn&#x27;t work for me, because I had the .env files associated with the ini file type. Make sure you associate them with the .env type instead to get it working.
</blockquote>
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9525--env-files-support">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9525--env-files-support</a>
<h3>.ignore</h3>
This plugin detects ignored files for many types of resources. Git, docker, npm and many more.
It adds syntax highlight and autocompletion to those files (.gitignore, .hgignore...), displaying which of the ignored files do not exist anymore.
It also sets a light grey font color in the project explorer for ignored files, so it is easier to &quot;ignore&quot; them.
Finally, it displays a message at the top of the editor when you have opened an ignored file, so that you know it is not going to affect the corresponding tool.
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7495--ignore">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7495--ignore</a>
<h3>BashSupport</h3>
If you have to work with shell scripts in any of your projects, this plugin is very useful.
It adds syntax highlight, autocompletion, quickfixes and refactoring for <code>bash</code> and <code>sh</code>.
It also allows you to add a missing shebang or even run the script right inside PhpStorm by right-clicking and selecting &quot;Run&quot;.
<img src="/assets/img/phpstorm-plugins/bash-support.png" alt="BashSupport"/>
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/4230-bashsupport">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/4230-bashsupport</a>
<h3>CodeGlance</h3>
This one os more cool than useful.
It adds a minimap inside any file editor, similar to the one that was made popular by Sublime text.
It can be used to get an idea of the size of the file just at a glance.
<img src="/assets/img/phpstorm-plugins/code-glance.png" alt="CodeGlance"/>
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7275-codeglance">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7275-codeglance</a>
<h3>PHP Annotations</h3>
This one is essential if you work with annotations of any kind (doctrine ORM, jms serializer, and such).
Since PHP does not natively support annotations, everybody that needs that feature uses the package <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/doctrine/annotations">doctrine/annotations</a>.
It works really great, but since it works at comment level, it is very easy to break something by accident.
This plugin adds a lot of features:
<ul>
<li>Mark use statements as used when imported for an annotation.</li>
<li>Refactor or jump to annotation classes.</li>
<li>Annotation properties autocompletion (and even values, for well known projects like doctrine/orm).</li>
<li>Auto alias imports.</li>
<li>Syntax highlight and error management.</li>
</ul>
This plugin almost suppresses the possibilities of breaking your code when running an automated use statements optimization or remove part of the annotation by mistake, things that cannot be caught by a unit test.
<img src="/assets/img/phpstorm-plugins/annotations.png" alt="PHP Annotations"/>
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7320-php-annotations">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7320-php-annotations</a>
<h3>PHP composer.json support</h3>
Everybody uses composer for modern PHP projects, so this plugin is a must.
It autocompletes composer.json blocks, and validates it, but making sure to never suggest a block that&#x27;s already in the file.
It also displays warnings for common mistakes, like using the dev-master constraint for a dependency.
It is very useful when you don&#x27;t remember the name of a package, since it autocompletes package names too.
<img src="/assets/img/phpstorm-plugins/composer.png" alt="PHP composer.json support"/>
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7631-php-composer-json-support">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7631-php-composer-json-support</a>
<h3>Php Inspections (EA Extended)</h3>
If I had to uninstall all my plugins but one, this would be the one that I would keep for sure. Probably the best plugin and the one I use the most on any project.
It adds a huge amount of new inspections to PhpStorm that will greatly improve your code.
To name some:
<ul>
<li>Warn about non-annotated thrown exceptions.</li>
<li>Warn about known PHP security issues.</li>
<li>Suggest better or more readable language constructions.</li>
<li>Suggest about more efficient ways of perform known tasks.</li>
<li>Warn about ugly code smells.</li>
<li>Warn about suspicious code blocks.</li>
</ul>
And things like that. It is impossible to list all the things this plugin is able to inspect. I recommend you to install it and test it, because it really improves your productivity.
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7622-php-inspections-ea-extended-">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7622-php-inspections-ea-extended-</a>
<h3>PHPUnit Enhancement</h3>
I discovered this plugin in the list I mentioned at the beginning of this article, so I have been using it for a short time.
I still have to tweak it to fit my needs, but it is better than anything anyway.
It mainly tells PhpStorm the type of mocked objects (either by PHPUnit&#x27;s mocks or by PHPSpec&#x27;s prophecies). This way, when you try to mock a method, you get autocompletion, and also, If later on you want to refactor that method or find their usages, it will find the mock too.
The problem is that, for example, you might create a prophecy of a method that expects more than one argument or has a specific type hint, and you pass it something like <code>Argument::cetera()</code>. That makes it mark an error because the method expects something else.
Apart from that, I think it&#x27;s worth it.
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9674-phpunit-enhancement">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9674-phpunit-enhancement</a>
<h3>Swagger plugin</h3>
When you work on an API that needs to be documented, swagger is a really good tool.
This plugin adds autocompletion and inspections on swagger docs, either yaml or JSON, so that you don&#x27;t need to wait for external tools to validate your files.
<img src="/assets/img/phpstorm-plugins/swagger.png" alt="Swagger plugin"/>
Link: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8347-swagger-plugin">https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8347-swagger-plugin</a>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
That&#x27;s all the third party plugins I use at the moment of writing this article.
If in the future I add any other, I&#x27;ll update this list.
If you know of any cool plugin that&#x27;s not listed here, just add a comment to the article so that other can be aware of its existence.

Earlier last week I found a github repository which collects different resources related with PhpStorm. Plugins, themes, utilities... I found it very interesting, because I think PhpStorm is the best PHP IDE by far, and I've been using it on an almost daily basis for the last 4 years.

The thing is…

The PhpStorm plugins of my choice

I think it is doubtless that modern PHP embraces SOLID principles, and therefore, dependency injection. That's why every modern PHP application needs a dependency injection container to deal with it.

There are several options out there, depending on the way you like to work. Every container has a…

Reusing factories in Zend ServiceManager

Sometimes the nature of an application requires you to change the default framework&#x27;s way to structure error responses (like 404 and 405).
On this article I&#x27;m going to explain how to customize those responses when working with Zend Expressive 2.
<h3>Expressive 1. Error handler.</h3>
In Expressive 1, error handling was different.
There used to be an element called error handler, which was responsible of handling uncaught exceptions, but also, other errors, like the ones above (404 and 405).
When using the error handler it was easier to have an standard way to generate error responses for any kind of situation, like unmatched routes (404), routes requested with an incorrect HTTP verb (405) or uncaught exceptions (500), as well as other errors.
<h3>Expressive 2 behavior.</h3>
In expressive 2, the error handler is gone, replaced by a middleware which catches exceptions and lets you generate error responses. However, this middleware does not deal with 404 and 405 errors anymore. Now, those errors are handled by two new elements.
<ul>
<li>405: The routing middleware (which is now a separated middleware class) returns a 405 response when it detects that a request has been performed to an existing path but using an unsupported method. It adds an Allow header too, including the allowed HTTP verbs for that path.</li>
<li>404: The last middleware in the stack now receives the so called &quot;default delegate&quot;, which is responsible of generating a response when the stack is exhausted. The default implementation is the <code>NotFoundDelegate</code>, which as its name suggests, returns a response with status 404.</li>
</ul>
The problem with this two elements is the response body.
The first one returns an empty body by default, and the second one returns an error template (if a renderer service was registered) or a plain text response otherwise.
If your API is returning JSON responses (for example), this behavior is inconsistent and should be fixed.
<h3>Customize the response prototype</h3>
Both the <code>RouteMiddleware</code> and the <code>NotFoundDelegate</code> allow a PSR-7 response to be injected on them, to be used as the response prototype.
This way, we can define a consistent response that has the same structure regardless the error.
<h4>- 404 -</h4>
For the &quot;not found&quot; error, we have to define and register our own factory for the default delegate, which gets injected our customized response prototype:
<pre class="language-php"><code class="language-php">&lt;?php
namespace App\Delegate;

use Psr\Container\ContainerInterface;
use Zend\Diactoros\Response\JsonResponse;
use Zend\Expressive\Delegate\NotFoundDelegate;

class DefaultDelegateFactory
{
 public function __invoke(ContainerInterface $container)
 {
 $myResponsePrototype = new JsonResponse([
 &#x27;foo&#x27; =&gt; &#x27;bar&#x27;,
 &#x27;message&#x27; =&gt; &#x27;Not found&#x27;,
 ], 404); // We don&#x27;t really need to set the status, since the NotFoundDelegate will set it for us

 return new NotFoundDelegate($myResponsePrototype);
 }
}
</code></pre>
Now register it on the <code>config/autoload/dependencies.global.php</code> file:
<pre class="language-php"><code class="language-php">&lt;?php

use App\Delegate\DefaultDelegateFactory;

return [

 &#x27;factories&#x27; =&gt; [
 &#x27;Zend\Expressive\Delegate\DefaultDelegate&#x27; =&gt; DefaultDelegateFactory::class,
 ],

 // [...]
 
];
</code></pre>
And that should be it.
Of course, in this case that we always want to return the same response, we could just define another delegate which returns it, instead of using the built in implementation.
<h4>- 405 -</h4>
The &quot;method not allowed&quot; case is very similar, but with the <code>RouteMiddleware</code> instead of the <code>NotFoundDelegate</code>. However, there is one thing to take into account that we&#x27;ll see later.
First, let&#x27;s create our own factory:
<pre class="language-php"><code class="language-php">&lt;?php
namespace App\Middleware;

use Psr\Container\ContainerInterface;
use Zend\Diactoros\Response\JsonResponse;
use Zend\Expressive\Middleware\RouteMiddleware;
use Zend\Expressive\Router\RouterInterface;

class RouteMiddlewareFactory
{
 public function __invoke(ContainerInterface $container)
 {
 $myResponsePrototype = new JsonResponse([
 &#x27;bar&#x27; =&gt; &#x27;foo&#x27;,
 &#x27;message&#x27; =&gt; &#x27;Method not allowed&#x27;,
 ], 405); // Again, we don&#x27;t need to set the status because the RouteMiddleware will set it

 return new RouteMiddleware($container-&gt;get(RouterInterface::class), $myResponsePrototype);
 }
}
</code></pre>
Now we should register the middleware service and pipe it, but here&#x27;s the &quot;problem&quot;.
When doing this, my first approach was trying to override the <code>Application::ROUTING_MIDDLEWARE</code> name, but it didn&#x27;t work.
Internally, when expressive detects that middleware name, it instantiates a <code>RouteMiddleware</code> instance of its own, without the custom response prototype.
I have already created a question in ZF&#x27;s forum, because I&#x27;m not sure if that&#x27;s the intended behavior: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://discourse.zendframework.com/t/customize-response-prototype-on-routemiddleware/129">https://discourse.zendframework.com/t/customize-response-prototype-on-routemiddleware/129</a>
In the meantime, we are going to use a different middleware/service name, so let&#x27;s register it.
<pre class="language-php"><code class="language-php">&lt;?php

use App\Middleware\RouteMiddlewareFactory;

return [

 &#x27;factories&#x27; =&gt; [
 &#x27;my_routing_middleware&#x27; =&gt; RouteMiddlewareFactory::class, 
 ],

];
</code></pre>
Now, we have to pipe our middleware instead of the built in <code>Application::ROUTING_MIDDLEWARE</code>. Do it on <code>config\pipeline.php</code>;
<pre class="language-php"><code class="language-php">&lt;?php
// [..]

// Remove this, which pipes the Application::ROUTING_MIDDLEWARE
//$app-&gt;pipeRoutingMiddleware();

// Add this instead so that our custom RouteMiddleware is used
$app-&gt;pipe(&#x27;my_routing_middleware&#x27;);

// [...]
</code></pre>
And that&#x27;s all.
If in the end, the &quot;problem&quot; described above is fixed somehow, I&#x27;ll update this article.
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
This demonstrates how flexible expressive is.
We have many possible approaches. Overwrite built-in components, customize its behavior... We are always in control of the application, and there&#x27;s no black magic involved.

Sometimes the nature of an application requires you to change the default framework's way to structure error responses (like 404 and 405). On this article I'm going to explain how to customize those responses when working with Zend Expressive 2.

Expressive 1. Error handler.

In Expressive 1, error…