PHP 8.4: Release Date and Features, August 2024

Originally published on my blog: https://dogan-ucar.de/php-8-4-release-date-and-features-august-2024/

Update from PHP 8.3 to PHP 8.4

In my previous post for the upcoming PHP 8.4 release, I addressed the expecting changes. Just a few days after the post, PHP announced Property Hooks — a feature that gives me mixed feelings. Today — a few months before the final release — I want to give a second overview to PHP 8.4. The following blog post will address changes to PHP 8.4 that are not addressed in the first blog and Property Hooks. For a full overview, I suggest to read both first.

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New Array functions

I can hear you saying: what?! Hasn’t everything already been said about this? Well, it seems like it is not.

There are 4 new features being added to PHP 8.4:

• array_find($array, $callback): mixed: returns the first element in $array for wich $callback returns true.
• array_find_key($array, $callback): mixed: returns the key of the first element for which $callback returns true.
• array_any($array, $callback): bool: returns true, if $callback returns true for any element.
• array_all($array, $callback): bool: returns true, if $callback returns true for all elements.

And now, I can hear you saying: shouldn’t this have been part of PHP for years?

Read more about the RFC here.

Would you like me to discuss the new array functions in detail in a blog post? If so, let me know in the comments.

CreateFromTimestamp function for DateTime/DateTimeImmutable

Another feature that sounds so obvious that you wonder why you haven’t missed it before: createFromTimestamp function for DateTime and DateTimeImmutable classes. Prior to 8.4, you have to create a new instance, use the setTimestamp method – two steps instead of just creating an object:

<?php
$dateTimeImmutable = new DateTimeImmutable();
$newDateTimeImmutable = $dateTimeImmutable->setTimestamp(1718337072);

With 8.4, the code shrinks to

<?php
$dateTimeImmutable = DateTimeImmutable::createFromTimestamp(1718337072);

I think this feature is not only needed for readability and DRY — it is also a good thing for junior developers not being aware of theory behind Immutability. For instance, a junior developer not being aware that setTimestamp will return a new object of DateTimeImmutable instead of modifying the existing instance will, can easily introduce bugs. These kind of bugs are also hard to see in code reviews.

#[Deprecated] Attribute

In short, this attribute gives developers the ability to mark anything as deprecated. While PHP internal code can do this, PHP developers working on frameworks or libraries have to take a non standardized way to express deprecation. The #[Deprecated] attribute should unify this.

<?php
#[\Deprecated("use Baz instead", since: "5.9")]
class FooBar {
}

I do not have strong feelings for attributes, to be honest. While I like the syntax and find it useful for some use cases — Override or Deprecated are two of it – I think they can very fast get overused. It is totally ok to give some metadata information about your code to get them interpreted by third party tools or the IDE. But once attributes get used for configuration or define application behaviour, a clear red line is crossed for me.

Another point is: Attributes do not really affect your source code unless you apply reflection on it. And using reflection, in turn, should net get overused.

I wrote about attributes, how and why they should get used here in the past. Check it out if interested.

Instantiation and Method Call in one Line

Syntactical sugar, but a good one. Instead of:

<?php
(new MyClass())->myMethod();

we can now call simply:

<?php
new MyClass()->myMethod();

and not only methods — the RFC covers among others, constants, static members and properties too. A very cool feature. I have often complained about the brackets and find that this makes the code easier to read.

New request_parse_body function

A new function that makes it easier to work with multipart/form-data content type — primarily used for HTTP forms. PHP parses this content type but only for POST requests by populating $_POST and $_FILES. The RFC adds a new function request_parse_body() to expose the existing functionality so that it may be used for other HTTP verbs. A nice feature that will most likely be relevant for framework or library developers, unless you do not work in legacy environments and must go the bloody way of doing everything yourself.

Conclusion

Although the changes coming with PHP 8.4 are not ground breaking, PHP is still on its journey of evolving. Version 8.4 will mostly likely be released in November this year and a feature freeze is planned for August 13th.