This post wants to go through PHP’s main features from 7.0 to 8.0 in a bullet point style with some links to more details. I am doing so because I would like to check the new features of PHP 8.0, and a list like this can be helpful for what functionalities I need to check. By the way, some of these new features extend a preexisting attribute that was introduced in the previous PHP versions. So this is the best time for me to check the past PHP features in a retrospected style.

What were the new Features of PHP 7.0?

• https://www.tutorialspoint.com/php7/index.htm
• New Features Included:
  1. Scalar type declarations
  2. Return type declarations
  3. Null coalescing operator
  4. Spaceship operator
  5. Constant arrays using define()
  6. Anonymous classes
  7. Unicode codepoint escape syntax
  8. Closure::call()
  9. Filtered unserialize()
  10. IntlChar
  11. Expectations
  12. Group use declarations
  13. Generator Return Expressions
  14. Generator delegation
  15. Integer division with intdiv()
  16. Session options
  17. preg_replace_callback_array()
  18. CSPRNG Functions

What were the new features of PHP 7.2?

Released: 30 Nov 2017

What are the new features of PHP 8.0?

Release: Nov 26 2020

• New Features will include:
  • JIT Compiler
  • Union Types
  • The null safe operator
  • Named arguments
  • Attributes
  • Match expression
  • Constructor property promotion
  • New static return type
  • New mixed type
  • Throw expression
  • Inheritance with private methods
  • Weak maps
  • Allowing ::class on objects
  • Non-capturing catches
  • Trailing comma in parameter lists
  • New Stringable interface
  • Create DateTime objects from the interface
  • New:
    • str_contains() function
    • fdiv() function
    • str_starts_with() and str_ends_with() functions
    • get_debug_type() function
    • get_resource_id() function
  • Abstract methods in traits improvements 
  • Object implementation of token_get_all()
  • Variable syntax tweaks
  • Type annotations for internal functions
  • ext-json always available

Conclusion & Closing

As it looks on the list above, PHP has evolved a lot in the past years. Developers implemented many great features already in the version of 7.0, which was much faster than PHP 5.6 because of the new PHP – Next-Gen engine. In the following posts, I will focus on the new features of PHP 8.0.