New Features

PHP Core

Named Arguments

Support for Named Arguments has been added.

Attributes

Support for Attributes has been added.

Constructor Property Promotion

Support for constructor property promotion (declaring properties in the constructor signature) has been added.

Union Types

Support for union types has been added.

Match Expression

Support for match expressions has been added.

Nullsafe Operator

Support for the nullsafe operator (?->) has been added.

Other new Features

• The WeakMap class has been added.

• The ValueError class has been added.

• Any number of function parameters may now be replaced by a variadic argument, as long as the types are compatible. For example, the following code is now allowed:

  <?php
  class A {
       public function method(int $many, string $parameters, $here) {}
  }
  class B extends A {
       public function method(...$everything) {}
  }
  ?>
  
  
  

• static (as in "late static binding") can now be used as a return type:

  <?php
  class Test {
       public function create(): static {
            return new static();
       }
  }
  ?>
  
  
  

• It is now possible to fetch the class name of an object using $object::class. The result is the same as get_class($object).

• ENTITY and ENTITY can now be used with arbitrary expressions, using new (expression)(...$args) and $obj instanceof (expression).

• Some consistency fixes to variable syntax have been applied, for example writing Foo::BAR::$baz is now allowed.

• Added Stringable interface, which is automatically implemented if a class defines a __toString() method.

• Traits can now define abstract private methods. Such methods must be implemented by the class using the trait.

• throw can now be used as an expression. That allows usages like:

  <?php
  $fn = fn() => throw new Exception('Exception in arrow function');
  $user = $session->user ?? throw new Exception('Must have user');
  
  
  

• An optional trailing comma is now allowed in parameter lists.

  <?php
  function functionWithLongSignature(
      Type1 $parameter1,
      Type2 $parameter2, // <-- This comma is now allowed.
  ) {
  }
  
  
  

• It is now possible to write catch (Exception) to catch an exception without storing it in a variable.

• Support for mixed type has been added.

• Private methods declared on a parent class no longer enforce any inheritance rules on the methods of a child class (with the exception of final private constructors). The following example illustrates which restrictions have been removed:

  <?php
  class ParentClass {
      private function method1() {}
      private function method2() {}
      private static function method3() {}
      // Throws a warning, as "final" no longer has an effect:
      private final function method4() {}
  }
  class ChildClass extends ParentClass {
      // All of the following are now allowed, even though the modifiers aren't
      // the same as for the private methods in the parent class.
      public abstract function method1() {}
      public static function method2() {}
      public function method3() {}
      public function method4() {}
  }
  ?>
  
  
  

• get_resource_id has been added, which returns the same value as (int) $resource. It provides the same functionality under a clearer API.

• The InternalIterator has been added.

Date and Time

• DateTime::createFromInterface and DateTimeImmutable::createFromInterface have been added.

• The DateTime format specifier p has been added, which is the same as P but returns Z rather than +00:00 for UTC.

DOM

DOMParentNode and DOMChildNode with new traversal and manipulation APIs have been added.

Filter

FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOL has been added as an alias for FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN. The new name is preferred, as it uses the canonical type name.

Enchant

enchant_dict_add, enchant_dict_is_added, and LIBENCHANT_VERSION have been added.

FPM

Added a new option pm.status_listen that allows getting the status from different endpoint (e.g. port or UDS file) which is useful for getting the status when all children are busy with serving long running requests.

Hash

HashContext objects can now be serialized.

Internationalization Functions

The IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_FULL, IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_LONG, IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_MEDIUM, and IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_SHORT constants have been added.

LDAP

ldap_count_references has been added, which returns the number of reference messages in a search result.

OPcache

If the opcache.record_warnings ini setting is enabled, OPcache will record compile-time warnings and replay them on the next include, even if it is served from cache.

OpenSSL

Added Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) (RFC 5652) support composed of functions for encryption, decryption, signing, verifying and reading. The API is similar to the API for PKCS #7 functions with an addition of new encoding constants: OPENSSL_ENCODING_DER, OPENSSL_ENCODING_SMIME and OPENSSL_ENCODING_PEM: openssl_cms_encrypt encrypts the message in the file with the certificates and outputs the result to the supplied file., openssl_cms_decrypt that decrypts the S/MIME message in the file and outputs the results to the supplied file., openssl_cms_read that exports the CMS file to an array of PEM certificates., openssl_cms_sign that signs the MIME message in the file with a cert and key and output the result to the supplied file., openssl_cms_verify that verifies that the data block is intact, the signer is who they say they are, and returns the certs of the signers.

Regular Expressions (Perl-Compatible)

preg_last_error_msg has been added, which returns a human-readable message for the last PCRE error. It complements preg_last_error, which returns an integer enum value instead.

Reflection

• The following methods can now return information about default values of parameters of internal functions:

  ReflectionParameter::isDefaultValueAvailable, ReflectionParameter::getDefaultValue, ReflectionParameter::isDefaultValueConstant, ReflectionParameter::getDefaultValueConstantName

SQLite3

SQLite3::setAuthorizer and respective class constants have been added to set a userland callback that will be used to authorize or not an action on the database.

Standard Library

• str_contains, str_starts_with and str_ends_with have been added, which check whether haystack contains, starts with or ends with needle, respectively.

• fdiv has been added, which performs a floating-point division under IEEE 754 semantics. Division by zero is considered well-defined and will return one of Inf, -Inf or NaN.

• get_debug_type has been added, which returns a type useful for error messages. Unlike gettype, it uses canonical type names, returns class names for objects, and indicates the resource type for resources.

• printf and friends now support the %h and %H format specifiers. These are the same as %g and %G, but always use "." as the decimal separator, rather than determining it through the LC_NUMERIC locale.

• printf and friends now support using "*" as width or precision, in which case the width/precision is passed as an argument to printf. This also allows using precision -1 with %g, %G, %h and %H. For example, the following code can be used to reproduce PHP's default floating point formatting:

  <?php
  printf("%.*H", (int) ini_get("precision"), $float);
  printf("%.*H", (int) ini_get("serialize_precision"), $float);
  ?>
  
  
  

• proc_open now supports pseudo-terminal (PTY) descriptors. The following attaches stdin, stdout and stderr to the same PTY:

  <?php
  $proc = proc_open($command, [['pty'], ['pty'], ['pty']], $pipes);
  ?>
  
  
  

• proc_open now supports socket pair descriptors. The following attaches a distinct socket pair to stdin, stdout and stderr:

  <?php
  $proc = proc_open($command, [['socket'], ['socket'], ['socket']], $pipes);
  ?>
  
  
  

  Unlike pipes, sockets do not suffer from blocking I/O issues on Windows. However, not all programs may work correctly with stdio sockets.

• Sorting functions are now stable, which means that equal-comparing elements will retain their original order.

• array_diff, array_intersect and their variations can now be used with a single array as argument. This means that usages like the following are now possible:

  <?php
  // OK even if $excludes is empty:
  array_diff($array, ...$excludes);
  // OK even if $arrays only contains a single array:
  array_intersect(...$arrays);
  ?>
  
  
  

• The flag parameter of ob_implicit_flush was changed to accept a bool rather than an int.

Tokenizer

PhpToken adds an object-based interface to the tokenizer. It provides a more uniform and ergonomic representation, while being more memory efficient and faster.

Zip

• The Zip extension has been updated to version 1.19.1.

• New ZipArchive::setMtimeName and ZipArchive::setMtimeIndex to set the modification time of an entry.

• New ZipArchive::registerProgressCallback to provide updates during archive close.

• New ZipArchive::registerCancelCallback to allow cancellation during archive close.

• New ZipArchive::replaceFile to replace an entry content.

• New ZipArchive::isCompressionMethodSupported to check optional compression features.

• New ZipArchive::isEncryptionMethodSupported to check optional encryption features.

• The ZipArchive::lastId property to get the index value of the last added entry has been added.

• Errors can now be checked after an archive has been closed using the ZipArchive::status and ZipArchive::statusSys properties, or the ZipArchive::getStatusString method.

• The 'remove_path' option of ZipArchive::addGlob and ZipArchive::addPattern is now treated as an arbitrary string prefix (for consistency with the 'add_path' option), whereas formerly it was treated as a directory name.

• Optional compression / encryption features are now listed in phpinfo.