With PHP 5.6 there are some great new features. We'll go over some of these features and how to use them. This includes variadic functions, constant scalar expressions, exponentiation, splat operator, use const/function, php input, phpdbg, and more. We will also cover deprecated features in PHP 5.6. Want to get involved with upcoming release? I'll show you how you can 'make_test' to start helping out.

1. PHP 5.6: New and
Deprecated Features
Mark Niebergall
https://joind.in/13884

2. About Mark Niebergall
● Developing in PHP since 2005
● Masters degree in Information Systems
● Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead
● Occupational health screening project
● Security: SSCP, CSSLP Certified
● PHP, databases, JavaScript
● Enjoy being outdoors

3. Supported Versions
See http://php.net/supported-versions.php

4. State of PHP
● PHP 5.3.29 EOL for PHP 5.3 release August 14, 2014
● PHP 5.4.40 released April 16, 2015, aging but still heavily used
● PHP 5.5.24 is current, many servers running PHP 5.5.X
● PHP 5.6.8 released April 16, 2015
● PHP 5.6.0 available since August 28, 2014
● PHP 5.7 is under development
● PHP 7.0 is under development
o PHP 6 unicode, branched but will never have production release
o Vote for version 6 vs 7, decided on 7
o Focused on performance
o More compact data structures - easier for JIT compiler
o Improved variable syntax (see
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/uniform_variable_syntax)

5. Live Demo
Setup
● 2 vagrant virtual machines with puppet
o 1 with PHP 5.5.8
o 1 with PHP 5.6.0
o Automatic code sync so same code resides on both web servers
See https://qa.php.net/howtohelp.php

6. PHP 5.6 Incompatible
Out With The Old
● Array keys won't be overwritten when defining an array as a property of a
class via an array literal
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.incompatible.php

7. PHP 5.6 Incompatible
Out With The Old
● json_decode strictness
● Stream wrappers now verify peer certificates and host names by default
when using SSL/TLS
● GMP (GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) resources are now
objects
● Mcrypt functions now require valid keys and initialization vectors
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.incompatible.php

8. PHP 5.6 Deprecated
On the way Out
● Calling a method from an incompatible context

9. PHP 5.6 Deprecated
On the way Out
● $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA and always_populate_raw_post_data
o use php://input instead (file_get_contents('php://input'))
o php://input is now reusable
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.deprecated.php

10. PHP 5.6 Deprecated
On the way Out
● iconv and mbstring encoding settings
o default_charset with UTF-8 as default value
o iconv.input_encoding, iconv.output_encoding, iconv.internal_encoding
o mbstring.http_input, mbstring.http_output, mbstring.internal_encoding
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.deprecated.php

11. PHP 5.6 Changed
Changed functionality
● crypt() will now raise an E_NOTICE error if no salt parameter

12. PHP 5.6 Changed
Changed functionality
● substr_compare() will now accept 0 for its length parameter

13. PHP 5.6 Changed
Changed functionality
● unserialize() will now fail if passed serialized data that has been
manipulated to attempt to instantiate an object without calling its
constructor
● cURL @file vs CURLFile
● Mcrypt source default value for mcrypt_create_iv
● PostgreSQL functions no longer experimental (ex: pg_insert)
● PostgreSQL pg_send_* no longer block until query write completion
● ReflectionClass::newInstanceWithoutConstructor() now allows non-final
internal classes to be instantiated
● XMLReader::getAttributeNs() and XMLReader::getAttributeNo() now return
NULL if the attribute could not be found, like XMLReader::getAttribute()
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.changed-functions.php

14. PHP 5.6 New Functions
New functions
● GMP: gmp_root(), gmp_rootrem()
● LDAP: ldap_escape(), ldap_modify_batch()
● MySQLi: mysqli_get_links_stats()
● OCI8: oci_get_implicit_resultset()
● OpenSSL: openssl_get_cert_locations(), openssl_x509_fingerprint(),
openssl_spki_new(), openssl_spki_verify(),
openssl_spki_export_challenge(), openssl_spki_export()
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.new-functions.php

15. PHP 5.6 New Functions
New functions (continued)
● PostgreSQL: pg_connect_poll(), pg_consume_input(), pg_flush(),
pg_socket()
● PDO_PGSQL: PDO::pgsqlGetNotify(), PDO::pgsqlGetPid()
● Zip: ZipArchive::setPassword()
Source: http://us1.php.net/manual/en/migration56.new-functions.php

16. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● Constant scalar expressions

17. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● Variadic functions

18. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● Argument unpacking using …
● AKA Splat

19. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● Exponentiation via **

20. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● use const and use function

21. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● Upload file > 2GB
o Sorry, not going to show this one

22. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● GMP now supports operator overloading

23. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● hash_equals: Timing attack safe string comparison

24. PHP 5.6 New Features
New stuff
● Magic method __debugInfo: Define
output for var_dump of class

25. Testing PHP builds
PHP QA
● Testing overview at https://qa.php.net/
● Test a build
o wget http://downloads.php.net/tyrael/php-5.6.9RC1.tar.gz
o tar xvzf php-5.6.9RC1.tar.gz
o cd php-5.6.9RC1
o ./configure
o make test
● Write testcases
● Give PHP QA team server time
See https://qa.php.net/howtohelp.php

26. Testing PHP builds
PHP QA

27. Testing PHP builds
PHP QA

28. Questions?
● https://joind.in/13884