The document discusses the major updates and features introduced in PHP 7. It highlights improvements such as error handling, new language features including the null coalesce operator, return type hints, and changes in object handling. The author also addresses the downfall of PHP 6 and reassures that PHP 7 aims for better consistency, speed, and performance.

1. John Coggeshall
@coogle
http://www.coggeshall.org/
A PEEK AT PHP 7.0

2. WELCOME!
• The CV
• PHP Core contributor (author of ext/tidy)
• PHP Developer since 96’
• Published lots of things
• Spoken lots of places
Melted Metal!
Love the boat!

3. ALL THE THINGS : PHP 7
• PHP 7 is the next major iteration of the PHP language
• Awesome new language features
• More sanity / consistency
• More speed!
• But wait, what happened to PHP 6?
• PHP 6 is dead.
• The short version: PHP 6’s big push was going to be Unicode support, but there
wasn’t enough developers to get that done so the tree stagnated and died.
• When will PHP 7 be released?
• Best guess: GA Fall, 2015

4. Warning
Everything I say here could be wrong.
… It’s probably not
… A lot of it is already implemented
… I probably got the date wrong
… There aren’t RFCs for everything
… At least I didn’t write a book on PHP 6

5. ERROR HANDLING

6. THE DEATH OF E_STRICT
• E_STRICT was our way of telling developers they were doing it wrong ™
• In PHP 7, E_STRICT is gone, and anything that was E_STRICT has been upgraded to
one of the following:
• Nothing (we just removed the E_STRICT error because it was dumb)
• Make it an E_DEPRECATED error (probably should have ran with this from the
beginning)
• Promote it to an E_NOTICE or E_WARNING (we’re serious about not letting you do
these things, knock it off)
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
28 4
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

7. CALL TO MEMBER FUNCTION OF
…ARG!!
• A really common error in PHP 5+ is “Call to member function blah() of non object”
• Basically, you tried to call a method on something that wasn’t an object (typically
NULL)
• $foo->bar->baz();
• In PHP 5, this is a fatal error and your application blows up
• In PHP 7 this has been changed to an E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR making it something
you can, you know, recover from in your application
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
32 0
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/catchable-call-to-member-of-
non-object

8. ENGINE EXCEPTIONS
• PHP 7 introduces the concept of using Exceptions for engine-level error handling to
replace E_ERROR, etc.
• Many / Most common error conditions will be converted to exceptions
• Future error conditions will, if possible, be implemented as exceptions
• Also introduced a revamped Exception object model
• BaseException
• EngineException
• ParseException
• Exception
• …
• Note: Existing catch code will not catch these new exceptions (clever)
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
60 2
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
39 19
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/engine_exceptions_for_php7

9. OBJECTS ‘N STUFF

10. WAIT.. THIS WAS BROKEN??
• In current versions of PHP, some internal classes could fail in the constructor and return a
object that, for all intensive purposes, was broken.
• In PHP 7, all internal classes throw exceptions in their constructors to prevent broken
instances
<?php
// Reflection function is not meant to accept an array (E_WARNING)
$reflection = new ReflectionFunction([]);
// Blows up
var_dump($reflection->getParameters());
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
32 1
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/internal_constructor_behaviour

11. SPEAKING OF CONSTRUCTORS..
• Also in PHP 7, the PHP 4 (circa 2000 – 15 years old) style of object constructors having
the same name as the class are one step closer to dying to the relief of all serious
developers.
• Methods named the same thing as the class (i.e. Filter::filter()) are just methods now
• Constructors are called __construct()
• In PHP 7 if it looks like you are using this horrible behavior it will now yell at you with an
E_DEPRECIATED
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
50 4
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/remove_php4_constructors

12. SIMPLIFIED USE STATEMENTS
• In PHP 7 we have added the notion of use statement “groups”
• Cleans up the top of our scripts
use FooBarClassA;
use FooBarClassB;
use FooBarClassC;
use FooBar{ClassA, ClassB, ClassC};
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/group_use_declarations
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
39 19

13. LANGUAGE FEATURES

14. SPACESHIPS!
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/combined-comparison-operator
• PHP 7 Introduces the “Combined Comparison Operator” (a.k.a. the Spaceship operator)
Operator <=> Equivalent
$a < $b ( $a <=> $b) === -1
$a <= $b ($a <=> $b) === -1 || ($a <=> $b) === 0
$a == $b ($a <=> $b) === 0
$a != $b ($a <=> $b) !== 0
$a >= $b ($a <=> $b) === 1 || ($a <=> $b) === 0
$a > $b ($a <=> $b) === 1
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
43 11

15. ?? OPERATOR
• No, that wasn’t a placeholder in my slides
• The ?? Operator, or Null Coalesce Operator which allows us to set default values for
variables when the variable doesn’t exist.
• Cleaner than trying to use ?: or other approaches
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/isset_ternary
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
31 3
<?php
// Useful for when you want to set default values for variables
$user = $_GET[‘user’] ?? ‘nobody’;

16. RETURN TYPES
• My personal war over the years has included this one
• Return type-hints will finally be part of PHP in PHP 7
• Doesn’t support “nullable” types (yet)
<?php
// Useful for when you want to set default values for variables
function returnsArray(): array {
return [‘happy’, ‘days’];
}
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
47 3
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/return_types

17. UNIFORM VARIABLE SYNTAX
• PHP has some… complicated|odd|dumb|insane variable syntax possibilities
• $foo->$bar[‘baz’]()
• There are a lot of inconsistencies in the way we resolve variables when they get a little
crazy
• In PHP 7, we are introducing a uniform syntax and fixing all of those issues
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/uniform_variable_syntax
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
30 1
<?php
$foo()[‘bar’](); // Call closure in array from return value
[$obj1, $obj2][0]->prop; // Access $obj1->prop
returnString(){0}; // Return first character
$foo::$bar::$baz; // Stacked static calls
$foo->bar()::baz(); // Stacked mixed calls
$foo()(); // Stacked function calls
$foo->bar()(); // Stacked method calls

18. WE STILL HAD THAT?
• Arcane open tags for PHP scripts are no longer supported in PHP 7
• ASP-style <% %>
• HTML-style <script language=“php”></script>
• Also, Hexadecimal support for “numeric strings” has been removed
• Before: ‘0x01’ == ‘1’ (true)
• Before: (int)’0x01’ == (int)’1’ (false, wtf?)
• Now: ‘0x01’ == ‘1’ (false)
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
26 8
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
29 0
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/remove_hex_support_in_numeric_strings
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/remove_alternative_php_tags

19. SCALAR TYPE HINTS
• PHP 7 will have support for scalar type hinting in addition to the already supported
complex-type hinting
• Introduces the notion of declare(strict_types=1) directives
• Per-file directive
• Put at the top of the file, will enforce strict typing of return values
• Caller file counts, not source file
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
108 48
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/scalar_type_hints_v5
<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
function add(float $a, float $b) : float {
return $a + $b;
}
add(1, 2); // retval = float(3)

20. NEW LIST() BEHAVIOR
• The list() statement(?) is a odd thing in PHP used to extract array values into variables
• list($a, $b, $c) = [1, 2, 3]; // $a = 1, $b = 2, $c = 3
• In PHP 7 there are a couple of changes to the behavior
• list() now assigns variables left-to-right instead of right-to left
• list() no longer supports extracting values from strings
<?php
$a = []
list($a[], $a[], $a[]) = [1, 2 ,3];
// OLD: $a = [3, 2, 1];
// NEW: $a = [1, 2, 3];
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/abstract_syntax_tree
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/fix_list_behavior_inconsistency

21. GO JOHNNY, GO!
• The so-called PHPNG
branch of PHP has been
merged as the basis for
the engine in PHP 7
• Translation: PHP most of
the time is a lot faster than
before
• One step closer to
effective meaningful JIT
for PHP
Oh, Yeah! Hell, No.
47 2
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/phpng

22. KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST
• PHP 7 like all things is going to be a moving target until it is done
• There is a VirtualBox of PHP 7 to toy around with maintained by Rasmus Lerdorf
• https://github.com/rlerdorf/php7dev
• The PHP RFC Wiki is also a great source of more details on everything we’ve discussed
and the things currently being considered
• https://wiki.php.net/rfc

23. John Coggeshall
@coogle
http://www.coggeshall.org/
THANK YOU / QUESTIONS?