What's new in PHP 7.2

Ian Littman / @iansltx

AustinPHP June 2017

http://ian.im/72aus0617

PHP 7.2alpha1 is out!

Announcement / Source / UPGRADING DOC

Cleanup (technically BC breaks) - CASTS

Numeric array indexes now convert to string property names when an array is cast as an object.

The reverse direction is similar; numeric string property names now map back to integer array keys.

Previously, these transformations would give you inaccessible indexes or properties.

Cleanup (technically BC breaks) - BAREWORDS

References to undefined constants (i.e. strings without quotes around them) now generate warnings instead of notices, though they still work for now.

This will turn into an Error eventually (<= PHP 8.0).

Cleanup (technically BC breaks)

• Session status now behaves more correctly, but will now error out if you provide invalid session status codes
• hash_hmac(), hash_hmac_file(), hash_pbkdf2() don't support non-cryptographic hashes anymore
• bcmod() in BCMath no longer truncates fractions
• The json_decode() option JSON_OBJECT_AS_ARRAY is used if the second parameter (assoc) is null. Previously JSON_OBJECT_AS_ARRAY was always ignored.
• Trait property initial value compatibility check no longer casts

Windows <7||2008R2 Dropped

...and Netware

New Features - Available now

• Now allowed in overridden methods
  • Removing a parameter typehint
  • Overriding an abstract method with another one
• Trailing commas in group use declarations
• Argon2i is now the default password_hash() algo
• Zip can now read/write encrypted archives

New Features - AVailable Now

• mail()/mb_send_mail() accepts an $extra_header array
• count() now warns on non-countable objects (anything other than arrays and Countable implementors)
• number_format() now never returns negative zero
• utf8_encode(), utf8_decode() are now in the standard extension (rather than in the xml extension)
• socket_getaddrinfo()
• Debuggable PDO prepared statement emulation

Libsodium is now in core!

New Features! (available soon)

• Loading extensions by name (no file extension needed)
• Better time calculations around Daylight Saving Time
• Null-coalesce equals (??=) operator
• Warning on trying to access an array offset of not-an-array (and not-ArrayAccess)
• List reference assignment, e.g. list(&$var1, $var2) = ...
• "object" typehint
• More secure values for TLS/SSL-related constants

mcrypt is now in PECL!

Deprecations (gone in PHP 8.0)

• __autoload
• $php_errormsg
• create_function()
• mbstring.func_overload
• (unset) cast
• parse_str() without second argument
• gmp_random()
• each() - it's really slow and problematic
• assert() with string argument (aka eval-check-true)
• $errcontext argument of error handler

thanks!