The mixed type of PHP 8

— Up until now, or precisely before PHP 8, whenever you were unsure about which type to use for the propperty or return type, you’d leave it without assigning any type. And if you’re using an IDE such as PhpStorm, the docBlock would mark those properties as mixed type like so.

Tracking model attribute changes in Laravel

— Sometimes, it’s useful to know if somethig has been changed in the model since it’s been loaded. For instance, you would want to check if the is_published attribute of the Post model is set or not before publishing the post further.