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PHP 8.0 New Features

Official Documentation: PHP 8.0 Release

1. Named Arguments​

Specify only required parameters and make them order-independent.

htmlspecialchars($string, double_encode: false);

2. Attributes (Annotations)​

Use native syntax instead of PHPDoc for metadata.

#[Route("/api/posts/{id}", methods: ["GET"])]
public function getId($id) { ... }

3. Constructor Property Promotion​

Combine class properties and constructors into one.

class Point {
    public function __construct(
        public float $x = 0.0,
        public float $y = 0.0,
        public float $z = 0.0,
    ) {}
}

4. Union Types​

Declare multiple possible types for a variable.

public function __construct(
    private int|float $number
) {}

5. Match Expression​

A safer replacement for switch() with strict comparisons and a return value.

echo match (8.0) {
    '8.0' => "Oh no!",
    8.0   => "This is what I expected",
}; // "This is what I expected"

6. Nullsafe Operator (?->)​

Automatically checks for null at each step of a method chain.

$country = $session?->user?->getAddress()?->country;

7. Just-In-Time (JIT) Compilation​

Introduced two engines (Tracing and Function) to increase performance for long-running scripts.

8. New Functions and Classes​

  • str_contains(), str_starts_with(), str_ends_with()
  • fdiv()
  • get_debug_type()
  • WeakMap class