Rob Allen

Software Engineer, ZF contributor and author of Zend Framework in Action

Talks

  • Secure your web application with 2FA

    Security, 12th April 2017

    Protecting your users' data with just a username and password is no longer satisfactory. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is the primary method of countering the effects of stolen passwords and is easy to implement in your web application. In this session we will discuss what two-factor authentication is, how it works and the challenges associated with it. We will then look how to integrate two-factor authentication into your PHP application's login workflow. We'll consider both YubiKey and Google Authenticator implementations, so you can make your users' accounts more secure.

  • Deployment within a Traditional IT Environment

    Build & Deploy, 9th August 2017

    Building line-of-business web applications for clients with traditional IT departments brings its own set of challenges when it comes to DevOps. In particular, the IT department adds additional constraints that you may not see in more forward-thinking companies. In this talk, I explore these complexities and shares some solutions we came up with in order to use modern development practices in nontraditional environments. I'll also cover the organizational and technical challenges encountered when IT departments are not used to developers having a say in the server environment and show you why it's worth spending time getting them on board.

  • Strict typing and static analysis

    A New Type of Year, 8th January 2020

    PHP 7 introduced type declarations and so brought PHP into the world of strict typing. Each subsequent release in the 7 series has improved this and PHP 7.4 is no different with exciting new type features. In addition, PHP 7 enabled static analysis tools that coupled with type declarations enable us to significantly remove bugs in our code before we even run it! In this talk, I will review PHP's strict type system, including the new PHP 7.4 features and show how they can make our code safer and clearer and easier to reason about. We will then turn our attention to the available static analysis tools and look at how, with strict typing, we can eliminate whole classes of bugs and make our applications better. By the end of this session, you will be well placed to write better PHP code that has fewer bugs and works as you expect every time.

  • Introduction to Serverless PHP

    Chatting Serverless, 13th February 2019

    APIs and microservices are how we build modern web applications and serverless technologies make this easy. This session will show you how serverless applications are built and how you can leverage your PHP skills to build APIs of all shapes and sizes. We will cover how to use your current knowledge to build applications in PHP within Apache OpenWhisk or AWS Lambda, leveraging the API Gateway to build robust APIs quickly and easily. By the end of the session, you’ll be well placed to design and build your own applications that take full advantage of the power of serverless technologies.

  • The Making of a Great API

    PHP 7.4 and OpenAPI, 11th March 2020

    Everyone is writing APIs but what makes a great one? I will take you on a tour of the most important features that you should think about when creating an API. These ensure that your API plays well with HTTP and make your API a delight to maintain and work with. Give your API a competitive edge by making it great and developers will want to work with it. What you'll learn from this talk: We will cover the most important things that make up a great API. You will learn: The importance of following the HTTP spec in terms of key parts of RFC7321 along with the how and why of API versioning. How error handling affects usability of an API and why RC7807 is so useful. How to document and API Security and authentication issues.

  • Improve your API with OpenAPI

    Lets Meet in Person!, 10th November 2021

    OpenAPI is the standard way to describe your HTTP API, adopted by most modern APIs. With the spec at the centre of your workflow, you can improve the quality of your API and development practices, and make integrations painless. With standardisation comes tooling and in this session, I will show you to leverage this to your advantage. We'll cover what OpenAPI is, why it's interesting and then how to use it. We will also look at how the OpenAPI specification enables you to create documentation, use mock servers and improve the robustness of our API with validation. This session is ideal for anyone who wants to write an API specification once and use it everywhere.

Interested in speaking?

We’re always looking for speakers, so do drop us a line, regardless of your experience, we’re all about first time speakers.

If you’re looking for ideas, a few of the topics we’re keen to hear about are:

  • Debugging & profiling
  • Frameworks
  • Lightning talks
  • PHP7, PHPNG
  • Support tools (e.g. phplint, boris, phpsh)