How to get ready for PHP 8 | Sebastian Bergmann

Get ready for PHP 8 and discover the features, improvements, and best practices for upgrading your PHP projects, from type safety to error reporting and more!

Key takeaways
  • Upgrade PHP regularly: PHP projects deprecate features and APIs regularly, and users should plan to upgrade their PHP versions every 2-3 years to take advantage of new features and ensure long-term support.
  • Type safety: PHP 8 will have a more robust type system, which will help developers catch type-related errors earlier and improve code maintainability.
  • Foreign function interface: The foreign function interface will allow developers to call C libraries and extensions directly, without the need for a PHP wrapper.
  • Auto-loading improvements: PHP 8 introduces improvements to auto-loading, including pre-loading and a foreign function interface, which will make it easier to handle large projects.
  • Error reporting: PHP 8 will introduce improvements to error reporting, including a new way to register error handlers and improved support for error reporting.
  • Self-documenting code: PHP developers can use inline documentation and type information to create self-documenting code that is easier to understand and maintain.
  • Code cleaning: When upgrading to PHP 8, developers should take the opportunity to clean up their code, including removing deprecated features and APIs, and improving code quality.
  • Security: PHP 8 will include security improvements, including better support for security headers and improvements to the PHP threat analysis tool.
  • Type inference: PHP 8 will support type inference, which will allow developers to infer the types of variables and functions from their usage.
  • Collection classes: PHP 8 will introduce collection classes, which will make it easier to work with arrays and objects.
  • Anonymous functions: PHP 8 will introduce improvements to anonymous functions, including the ability to use them as closure functions.
  • Changes to “-1” error reporting: The “-1” error reporting level in PHP.ini will no longer be supported in PHP 8, and developers will need to use error reporting levels 0-8 instead.