Research Documentation 05 Php 8

05 - PHP 8

New Feature 1: JIT Compiler

The Just-In-Time compiler is a new feature of PHP 8. While it was already available in PHP since 7.4 as a testing tool, it's performance and usability were improved in PHP 8. JIT increases the speed of PHP 8 applications due to how it handles the compilation of the PHP scripts.

New Feature 2: Nullsafe Operator

The nullsafe operator (?->) is another new feature of PHP 8, but unlike the JIT compiler, the nullsafe operator didn't exist in previous versions and you had to check for the null explicitly. The nullsafe operator comes with a cleaner looking code with simpler syntax. An example of using the nullsafe operator:

$username = $user?->getUsername();

In the code above, if $user is null, the null safe operator will return null without throwing an error. If $user is not null, the getUsername() method will be called as expected. An example of code prior to the nullsafe operator:

$user = getUser();
if ($user !== null) {
$username = $user->getUsername();
}

While both lines of code accomplish the same thing, the nullsafe operator produces shorter, cleaner looking code in a single line rather than multiple.

New Feature 3: Named Arguments

Named arguments provide a new way of passing arguments to a function in PHP based on the parameter name, rather than the parameter position. This creates code that is more readable and can skip optional parameters when calling a function. An example includes:

function createProfile($name, $age, $email = null) {
    // Function implementation
}

createProfile(name: "Alice", age: 30); // email is omitted
createProfile(age: 25, name: "Bob", email: "bob@example.com"); // order can be rearranged

Older versions of PHP only let you pass arguments based on their positions, causing you to follow a defined function order. This lead to confusion when functions had many parameters or optional parameters involved. Named functions just make it easier to work with functions and helps to reduce errors at the same time in the argument order.

Summary of the Documentation

The update to PHP 8 brought many new optimizations and powerful features to the PHP language. Some of these updates have made PHP faster and more secure. While only three of those features are listed in this document, there exist a plethora of new additions to the PHP language in the release of PHP version 8 that made things faster and more intuitive.