What's new in PHP 8.4
PHP 8.3 has already been released a few months back and it’s time to look at what’s coming in PHP 8.4.
It’s not a lot of features so far but there are some interesting ones. I’ll be updating this article as more features are added to the PHP 8.4 release. So, make sure you bookmark this article.
- New modes for the
round()function - A new way to disable JIT
- A new JIT implementation
- A new option to parse huge XMLs
- Multibyte equivalents for the
trim()function - A new class for parsing and serializing HTML5
New modes for the round() function
The round() function is used to round a number to its nearest integer. It’s a very common function used in PHP.
Up until now, the round() function had only four rounding modes: PHP_ROUND_HALF_UP, PHP_ROUND_HALF_DOWN, PHP_ROUND_HALF_EVEN, and PHP_ROUND_HALF_ODD.
In PHP 8.4, four more rounding modes will be added to the round() function.
-
PHP_ROUND_CEILING- This will round the number to the nearest integer bigger than the given number. So,round(1.3, 0, PHP_ROUND_CEILING)will return2since2is the nearest integer bigger than1.3. -
PHP_ROUND_FLOOR- This will round the number to the nearest integer smaller than the given number. So,round(1.3, 0, PHP_ROUND_FLOOR)will return1since1is the nearest integer smaller than1.3. -
PHP_ROUND_AWAY_FROM_ZERO- This will round the number away from zero. So,round(1.3, 0, PHP_ROUND_AWAY_FROM_ZERO)will return2since2is away from zero and is the nearest integer. -
PHP_ROUND_TOWARD_ZERO- This will round the number towards zero. So,round(1.3, 0, PHP_ROUND_TOWARD_ZERO)will return1since1is towards zero and is the nearest integer.
A new way to disable JIT
PHP 8.0 introduced JIT (Just In Time) compilation which is a technique that converts PHP code into machine code at runtime. This improves the performance of PHP code.
So, you can change a lot of different configurations related to JIT in the php.ini file but the current way of disabling JIT is a little bit confusing.
You can do it by setting the opcache.jit_buffer_size to 0 in the php.ini file. But this is not very intuitive.
opcache.jit=tracing
opcache.jit_buffer_size=0
To make it more intuitive, PHP 8.4 will introduce a new configuration directive called disable which will disable JIT.
opcache.jit=disable
opcache.jit_buffer_size=64m
Here, the default value for opcache.jit_buffer_size is also updated to 64m from 0.
A new JIT implementation
This change is not a user-facing change but it’s worth mentioning here.
PHP 8.4 will attempt to implement a new JIT implementation based on the IR (Intermediate Representation) framework. This new implementation is said to be “smarter” than the current one.
This implementation only uses a single back-end that constructs IR to generate x86 and AArch64 code as opposed to the current implementation which uses two back-ends.
A new option to parse huge XMLs
PHP 8.4 will introduce a new option called XML_OPTION_PARSE_HUGE that can be passed along to xml_parser_set_option while parsing XMLs.
Here’s how this looks like.
function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs)
{
// Do something interesting
}
function endElement($parser, $name)
{
// Do something interesting
}
$parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_parser_set_option($parser, XML_OPTION_PARSE_HUGE, true);
// Changing this to false, or not executing this line,
// will cause the parsing to error out on large inputs
xml_set_element_handler($parser, "startElement", "endElement");
// Add more handlers
$success = xml_parse($parser, $my_long_xml_input_already_in_memory);
This option will allow you to parse huge XMLs without running into memory issues or running into parsing errors.
Multibyte equivalents for the trim() function
PHP has always been lacking multibyte equivalents for the trim() function. But in PHP 8.4, this will be fixed.
The following three functions will be added to PHP 8.4.
mb_trim()- Same astrim()but for multibyte strings. It will remove all whitespace characters from the beginning and end of a string.
Here’s the entire signature of the function.
function mb_trim(string $string, string $characters = " \f\n\r\t\v\x00\u{00A0}\u{1680}\u{2000}\u{2001}\u{2002}\u{2003}\u{2004}\u{2005}\u{2006}\u{2007}\u{2008}\u{2009}\u{200A}\u{2028}\u{2029}\u{202F}\u{205F}\u{3000}\u{0085}\u{180E}"): string
mb_ltrim()- Same asltrim()but for multibyte strings. It will remove all whitespace characters from the beginning of a string.
Here’s the entire signature of the function.
function mb_ltrim(string $string, string $characters = " \f\n\r\t\v\x00\u{00A0}\u{1680}\u{2000}\u{2001}\u{2002}\u{2003}\u{2004}\u{2005}\u{2006}\u{2007}\u{2008}\u{2009}\u{200A}\u{2028}\u{2029}\u{202F}\u{205F}\u{3000}\u{0085}\u{180E}", ?string $encoding = null): string
mb_rtrim()- Same asrtrim()but for multibyte strings. It will remove all whitespace characters from the end of a string.
Here’s the entire signature of the function.
function mb_rtrim(string $string, string $characters = " \f\n\r\t\v\x00\u{00A0}\u{1680}\u{2000}\u{2001}\u{2002}\u{2003}\u{2004}\u{2005}\u{2006}\u{2007}\u{2008}\u{2009}\u{200A}\u{2028}\u{2029}\u{202F}\u{205F}\u{3000}\u{0085}\u{180E}", ?string $encoding = null): string
A new class for parsing and serializing HTML5
Up until now, PHP’s DOM extension is kind of stuck with the HTML4 specification. That is the DOMDocument class can only parse and serialize HTML4 documents.
But since HTML5 is the new standard, PHP 8.4 will introduce a new class called DOM\HTMLDocument that can parse and serialize HTML5 documents.
Here’s how this looks like.
namespace DOM {
// The base abstract document class
abstract class Document extends DOM\Node implements DOM\ParentNode {
/* all properties and methods that are common and sensible for both XML & HTML documents */
}
final class XMLDocument extends Document {
/* insert specific XML methods and properties (e.g. xmlVersion, validate(), ...) here */
private function __construct() {}
public static function createEmpty(string $version = "1.0", string $encoding = "UTF-8"): XMLDocument;
public static function createFromFile(string $path, int $options = 0, ?string $override_encoding = null): XMLDocument;
public static function createFromString(string $source, int $options = 0, ?string $override_encoding = null): XMLDocument;
}
final class HTMLDocument extends Document {
/* insert specific Html methods and properties here */
private function __construct() {}
public static function createEmpty(string $encoding = "UTF-8"): HTMLDocument;
public static function createFromFile(string $path, int $options = 0, ?string $override_encoding = null): HTMLDocument;
public static function createFromString(string $source, int $options = 0, ?string $override_encoding = null): HTMLDocument;
}
}
class DOMDocument extends DOM\Document {
/* Keep methods, properties, and constructor the same as they are now */
}
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