PHP has been and continues to be one of the key assets in web development. The announcement of the release of PHP 8 has sent shivers down the spines of all technophiles. This blog will outline some of the key features and upgrades of PHP 8.0 and PHP 7.4.
PHP 8.0 will be released this year, in 2021, and will be supported until 2024 while PHP 7.4 (released on November 28th, 2019) will be supported until 2022.
PHP 7.4’S KEY FEATURES
- ype variance (which was present in early PHPs), has been upgraded. There are 2 variances: covariance and contravariance. In contrast to the 7.2 version of PHP, which only supported partial contravariance, PHP 7.4 now supports complete covariance and contravariance. Covariance allows the child’s method to be returned to a specific type, whereas contravariance does not.
- Another feature of PHP 7.4 is the Null Coalescing operator, which is used to determine whether the variable provided is null. Its primary function is to prevent the object function from returning a null value instead of a default optimized value.
- PHP 7.4 was updated to include a new custom object serialization mechanism. PHP currently provides two mechanisms for custom serialization of objects. To begin, there are the __sleep() and __wakeup() methods, as well as the Serializable interface.
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PHP 8.0 KEY FEATURES
- The PHP JIT (just in time compiler) is one of the most admired features of PHP 8.0. It was carried out almost impartially as part of the OPcache. When the feature is enabled, the supplementary region of OPcache is stored alongside the native codes of the PHP files.
- Constructor Property Promotion is a new feature in the upcoming 8th version of PHP. It proposes a concise syntax that simplifies the property declaration by making it dumpier.
- Validation for abstract trait methods is a mechanism for code reused in languages such as PHP. Their role is to declare methods that can be used in multiple categories.
- Another feature of PHP 8.0 is the weak map, which is a collection of objects with weakly mentioned keys. The weak maps, as a result, are not prevented from being garbage collected.
In conclusion
This blog discusses some of the improved features of PHP 8 over the previous versions. PHP is a popular programming language that is constantly evolving with frequent updates.
The 8th version yet to be released, but anticipation among technophiles is at an all-time high. Based on the features, we believe it is worth the wait and excitement.
I hope this blog has given you a better understanding of some of the upcoming version’s features.