🔮 PHP 8.0 Upgrade Features/Notes

[chrisblakley]

PHP Version Timeline: https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
PHP Release Notes: https://php.watch/versions

PHP 8.0 Info & References

https://php.watch/versions/8.0
https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8

• Release Date: November 2020
• Active Support Until November 2022
• Security Support Until November 2023

Projected Nebula Minimum Version Timeline

PHP Version	Proposed Date	Nebula GitHub Issue
7.3	May 2022 ✅	#2089
7.4	May 2023 ✅	#2147
8.0	January 2025	#1992
8.1	2027	#2234
8.2	2029	#2235
8.3	2031	#2283
8.4	2033	#2299
8.5	2035	-
9.0	TBD	#2236

Notable Features related to Nebula in PHP 8.0

Launch window is around December 2020, but will be much longer before we can make use of these in Nebula.

• str_contains()
• str_starts_with() and str_ends_with()
• The @ operator no longer silences fatal errors. Make sure there are none in Nebula
• Union Types
• Named Arguments
• Null safe operator
• Match expression

Old:

if ( strpos('Foo Bar Baz', 'Bar') !== false ){
    echo 'Found';
}

New:

if ( str_contains('Foo Bar Baz', 'Foo') ){ //This is case-sensitive
    echo 'Found';
}

[chrisblakley]

https://php.watch/versions/8.0/str_starts_with-str_ends_with

str_starts_with() and str_ends_with() coming to PHP 8.

[chrisblakley]

I know this is for PHP v8, but some other things to note regarding PHP 7.4:

• Arrow functions (probably only use sparingly in Nebula) fn()
• Null coalescing assignment operator ??=
• Numerical literal separators (underscores) 123_456_789.01
  • Added //PHP 7.4 use numeric separators here comments for these

7.4 is in mainstream support right now, but until it is the minimum supported version we can't implement these in Nebula. Could be a few years before that happens. Probably at least January 2022.

Moved this comment to: #2147

For PHP 8 we're probably looking at January 2023...

[chrisblakley]

Named Arguments is added to the list as well: https://stitcher.io/blog/php-8-named-arguments

setcookie(
    name: 'test',
    expires: time() + 60 * 60 * 2,
);

[chrisblakley]

The match expression seems really useful too:

$result = match($input){
    0 => "hello",
    '1', '2', '3' => "world",
};

So in this case if $input was 2, then $result would be set to world.

Another example of match():

[chrisblakley]

In the meantime, testing can be performed on WP Taste: https://tastewp.com/

[chrisblakley]

Here's my more specific guesstimates at PHP minimum version update dates: #2089 (comment)

Once we bump to 7.2 and then 7.3, I'll update #2147 with the next guesstimate and then this issue with the one related to PHP 8 and so on.

New guesstimate: #2147 (comment)

[chrisblakley]

Thinking sometime in 2023 for minimum version to 8.0... #2147 (comment)

[chrisblakley]

Noting locations to update strpos() with str_contains() with the following comment:

 //@todo "Nebula" 0: Update strpos() to str_contains() in PHP8

Edit: Be careful of some locations that are using strpos() to actually get the index (and not just detect if a string contains another string)!

[chrisblakley]

Usage statistics as of January 2024.

https://stitcher.io/blog/php-version-stats-january-2024

I'm thinking the threshold for minimum v8 is when 7.4 goes under 5%.

Edit: Here is the July 2024 data: https://stitcher.io/blog/php-version-stats-july-2024

PHP 7.4 is still at 10.2% so we'll wait until at least January 2025 to make a decision on when to pull the trigger on 8.0 minimum version for Nebula. If it drops another ~4% down to around ~6% usage that may be sufficient to bump it up.