What's New In PHP 8.0? Check Out The Features

PHP 8 was recently released and we've not covered all the technical aspects. If you're a Product Owner and looking to launch an entirely new site or API built using PHP, What PHP 8 means to you? What are the benefits you can reap when you upgrade an existing website or API in PHP 8? To summarize that, you can enjoy speed improvements by using JIT (Just In time) compilation.

Additionally the development team of your company will have access to the many enhanced language features which help to make PHP more suitable for large-scale projects. Union types support verification of the type that is defined, making PHP more the strong type of typing. This is an option, which allows you to make use of both stronger and weaker typing, based on the scenario of the moment. 

PHP 8 offers many similar improvements and enhancements, but this article will concentrate more at the Owner of the Program's perspective point of viewpoint on the new features with PHP 8. 

History of PHP 

Let's go through a brief review of PHP's past history that helps us comprehend its evolution throughout the years and the process that led to bringing in JIT compilation in version 8. 

In the beginning of PHP the primary purpose was to make it easier for the development of web-based applications.  

PHP was an engine for templates that could allow users to choose data in a database , and transform it dynamically into HTML. PHP was designed to prevent creating complex projects using C/C++, and to reduce the technical barrier to web designers. In time, PHP grew as a language with more features and eventually evolved into more than simply a template engine. 

In Version 5, PHP had become a general-purpose web-based language, with an enormous community and an extensive selection of libraries and frameworks. Version 5 added the most powerful OOP support, which allows users to write organized, enterprise-level software developed using the highest quality SOLID principles.  

Modern version of PHP introduced the concept of frameworks, with the most well-known (Laravel) being designed as an alternative to traditional CodeIgniter. Symfony-framework was an Java Spring enterprise framework of the PHP world as well as PHP gained tools such as Package Manager Composer as well as the framework for unit testing PHPUnit. 

The next major version following PHP five was PHP 7. It was true that they left out PHP version 6. The PHP core team decided not to add JIT-compilation but they did make massive improvements in the interpreter and were able to keep the language backward-compatible (unlike the switch to Python 2 to Python 3). 

PHP 7 introduced a significant performance improvement, improved RAM usage and improved syntax and was backward-compatible with PHP 5 in the majority of cases, with some instances where it was possible to bring PHP 5 to synchronization to PHP 7 within a reasonable time frame. 

The latest version of PHP, PHP 8 has introduced JIT-compilation alongside a myriad of PHP 8 breaking changes, an obvious step to improve on PHP 7. The positive side is that the PHP core team has maintained their policy of prioritizing backward compatibility, the same way they did when moving out of version 5, to 7. 

PHP 8 Improvements and New Features 

Other than JIT In addition, we can anticipate numerous features and enhancements in PHP 8. The following list is a hand-picked list of upcoming enhancements and modifications that will improve the reliability of PHP and make it more efficient. 

• Constructor Property Promotion 
• Validation for Abstract Trait Methods 
• Incompatible Method Signatures 
• Arrays Starting With a Negative Index 
• Union Types 2.0 
• Consistent Type Errors for Internal Functions 
• Throw Expression 
• Weak Maps 
• Trailing Comma in Parameter List 
• Let objects use class syntax 
• Attributes v2 
• Named Arguments 
• Nullsafe Operator 
• Saner String to Number Comparisons 
• Saner Numeric Strings 
• Match Expression v2 
• Stricter Type Checks for Arithmetic/Bitwise Operators 

Do I need to change from PHP 7 to PHP 8? 

As you can see, PHP 8 has some incredible new features, such as union types NullSafe Operator, Named Arguments, which can make your development life enjoyable and interesting. It also has improvements in performance and optimizations. It's been found that PHP8 is 18.47 percent more efficient over PHP 7.4. It is therefore recommended that you upgrade to PHP 8.  

However, before you upgrade, make sure that your application can run PHP 8. The WordPress 5.7 has more stability when compared to PHP 8.0 since it already comes with PHP 8 compatibility fixes, such as, for instance the removal from the operator @ that no longer allows fatal errors. The most well-known WordPress plugins already come with compatibility fixes. 

How do I start the creation of a brand new PHP project 

If you're just starting out it's possible to start with version 8. This will reduce the costs moving from a prior version. When your employees are working to complete the upgrade, minor versions will be released and you'll be ready to make the transition. 

The new PHP 8 enhancements will allow teams to develop more efficient code, which will result in improved performance right from the start. Remember that the more PHP code you write in earlier versions of PHP the more migration you'll have to perform in order to upgrade to version 8. 

The biggest obstacle in using PHP 8 is when you are aware that there will be certain dependencies that are not compatible with version 8 by your release date. This could be a signal that you need to start considering replacing these dependencies in the future. 

Conclusion 

In this article, we explored the latest features of PHP 8.0. We discussed new features, JIT compilers, and found new possibilities for PHP web development. 

If you've not upgraded PHP to 8.0 it's the perfect moment to begin your journey into the exciting world of PHP that is packed with incredible new features and enhancements.