PHP 8 has been released. What’s new in PHP 8?
PHP 8 has been released and it have some major updates. There is many new features and optimizations including union types, constructor property promotion, named arguments, attributes, match expression, JIT, nullsafe operator and improvements in the type system, error handling and consistency.
Few of updates are as following from the release announcement.
Attributes
// php 7
class PostsController
{
/**
* @Route("/api/posts/{id}", methods={"GET"})
*/
public function get($id) { /* ... */ }
}
// php 8
class PostsController
{
#[Route("/api/posts/{id}", methods: ["GET"])]
public function get($id) { /* ... */ }
}
Named Arguments
// php7
htmlspecialchars($string, ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401, 'UTF-8', false);
// php 8
htmlspecialchars($string, double_encode: false);
Match Expressions
// php 7
switch (8.0) {
case '8.0':
$result = "Oh no!";
break;
case 8.0:
$result = "This is what I expected";
break;
}
echo $result;
//> Oh no!
// php 8
echo match (8.0) {
'8.0' => "Oh no!",
8.0 => "This is what I expected",
};
//> This is what I expected
Nullsafe Operator
// php 7
$country = null;
if ($session !== null) {
$user = $session->user;
if ($user !== null) {
$address = $user->getAddress();
if ($address !== null) {
$country = $address->country;
}
}
}
// php 8
$country = $session?->user?->getAddress()?->country;
Constructor Property Promotion
// php 7
class Point {
public float $x;
public float $y;
public float $z;
public function __construct(
float $x = 0.0,
float $y = 0.0,
float $z = 0.0,
) {
$this->x = $x;
$this->y = $y;
$this->z = $z;
}
}
// php 8
class Point {
public function __construct(
public float $x = 0.0,
public float $y = 0.0,
public float $z = 0.0,
) {}
}
Union Types
// php 7
class Number {
/** @var int|float */
private $number;
/**
* @param float|int $number
*/
public function __construct($number) {
$this->number = $number;
}
}
new Number('NaN'); // Ok
// php 8
class Number {
public function __construct(
private int|float $number
) {}
}
new Number('NaN'); // TypeError
These are just highlights, you can find more about updates on official release announcement.
