{
  "id": 8036562,
  "title": "My temporary PHP fix from 2014 has nearly 20M installs. Today I'm deprecating it",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/17/my-temporary-php-fix-from-2014-has-nearly-20m-installs-today-im",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-17T13:42:17.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Lobsters",
    "slug": "lobsters",
    "url": "https://jakeasmith.com/blog/http-build-url/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In 2014, a PHP developer wrote 174 lines of code as a temporary solution for AOL's content management system. The code was posted on Packagist, and despite its intended lifespan of just a year or two, it has been installed nearly 20 million times since. The code is used by WPML, a multilingual WordPress plugin, and the idna-convert library, which is included in Debian and Ubuntu. The developer, who has since moved on from PHP, has decided to officially deprecate the code. A new maintainer has been found, but the developer warns that the package will no longer receive updates. The developer recommends using the PHP League's URI library or PHP 8.5's built-in URI API instead.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}