Difference Between PHP 7 vs PHP 8

PHP is undoubtedly a strong server-side scripting language that is useful for creating interactive and powerful websites. According to data from W3Techs, 78.9% of business websites are developed using the PHP language. The stats clearly show the immense popularity of PHP language amongst the developers. The sheer flexibility PHP provides to its users is the reason it is used by almost 82% of the websites. This ratio is increasing day by day and expected to cover the huge web development market in the coming years. The reality is that it is the most used programming language by the PHP developers for developing interactive websites. In this post we have discussed the difference between PHP 7 and PHP 8, and the advantages the latter offers over PHP 7.

Due to wide adoption and decades of maintaining functionality, updating to PHP includes runtime improvements and new features that take significant time and consideration.

What’s the Difference Between PHP 7 and PHP 8 – Necessity to Upgrade Website from PHP 7 to PHP 8

There is no issue with PHP 7. The difference between PHP 7 and PHP 8 that the developers and users noticed is the performance and speed of the website. According to the survey conducted, websites that take longer than three seconds to load are abandoned. Nowadays, every visitor wants the website to load quickly, if the website takes time to load, they leave the website immediately. So, it is better to upgrade to PHP 8.

We are inevitably support with the new PHP 8 version as it has been tested well before the release and comes with improvements that actually increase website speed. The new PHP version is fast as compared to the previous one and has the potential to compete in the modern technology world.

Developers should be aware of all the updates, changes and new features that come in PHP 8, to develop robust, scalable, and secure websites and applications.

What are the Advantages of PHP 8 over PHP 7

New Language Syntax

PHP 8 and PHP 8.1 both have changes that can be generally divided into three groups: new functionality, language syntax, and execution strategy improvements. Developers have the opportunity to write more expressive code thanks to syntax modifications, with fewer lines of code.

If we can develop the features we want using the syntax, that helps us to write code more quickly and improves the quality of websites we developed.

Excellent Load Bearing Capacity

With the introduction of PHP 8, developers noticed that there is a great shift in the performance of websites and applications. They stated that using the new version provides the freedom to enable hosts, which makes the PHP scripting process run smoothly. In addition to resulting in flawless performance, hosts also allows for the simultaneous hosting of multiple customers on a single piece of hardware. Even PHP 8 is running properly for Facebook HHVM, which generally operates on JIT compiler and compiles the code to the right direction.

Help with Null

It can be difficult to access the data from a structure that is deeply nested. Values at keys within an object or PHP array can be NULL, and they need to be checked properly, because it can cause runtime errors if not properly addressed. The isset function has helped with this issue for many years, but with the introduction of object-oriented programming in PHP 7, lots of data accessing is done via class methods.

With the introduction of PHP 8, the solution to the problem is solved by the nullsafe operator. Many other programming languages already have this operator, and its addition to PHP 8 will allow developers to access the data more efficiently.

Return Types

If you are a coding expert, you have probably heard about return types that are used in various programming languages for better scripting. Now return types have been introduced in PHP 8, which helps the developers to specify the type of variable a scripted function should return.

The return type must be specified here after the closing parenthesis of an argument. The proper syntax would be like:

function foo(): array {
return [];
}

You can see right away that the function “foo” is returning an array as an output in this example. Previous PHP versions did not have this functionality, so the majority of the technical readers might not be aware of the output the function will provide after the code has been executed.

Spaceship Operators

In order to compare two expressions in a well-aligned code, spaceship operators are used. These operators are also known as combined comparison operators. This is the most cutting-edge feature the developers can use to take advantage of it. Users of PHP are now free to use this feature to complement the code and make it perfect to understand.

Asynchronous Programming Support

With the previous PHP 7 version, it was difficult to run different activities. PHP 8 has completely solved this problem. As it allows seamless execution of different tasks at a time. Developers can access the database, networking, I/O operations, and set timers at the same time without any interruptions.  

PHP 8 also supports multi – threading environment which makes it suitable to easily handle the simultaneous requests from the server.

Best for Mobile Devices

Nowadays, businesses want high customer retention, and it is only possible if your provide better user experience to mobile users, and this is only possible if you use the latest PHP Version. Using PHP 8 will work perfectly as it offers the reduced memory usage native local thread storage and execution engine improvements features. In PHP 8 these features are included to facilitate mobile access.

Absolute Choice for Business

PHP 8 is a perfect choice for business in order to improve website performance and functionality. For ecommerce websites, owners who are facing the issue manage the huge amount of traffic on their websites. PHP 8 is the perfect option for them and also to maintain day to day tasks properly.

The largest concern for owners of ecommerce websites is ensuring that the connected internal APIs are up and running. Capable of handling a large amount of requests without depleting much power. By enabling them to cut their operating costs, PHP 8 has solved this major problem.

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Final Thoughts

After reading the advantages of PHP 8, now you are thinking of choosing the PHP for your web development project. There are other advantages which attract developers to choose PHP 8 for web development. Such as easy to use, platform-independent, support all servers, and cost-efficient. Additionally, it provides a variety of frameworks such as Laravel, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc that are helpful for accelerating the web development process and creating robust websites in less time.

However, many of these changes were already deprecated in the previous version of PHP, so if you have kept up-to-date over the years, upgrading to the newest version PHP 8, will not be difficult.

PHP 8 is unquestionably the best update to date, in my opinion. Not only has it made the coding methods and structure easier, but it is also optimized to compile time of the code rather than run time, leading to a faster platform performance. The language now has greater value and user involvement because of small updates

Please share your thoughts on the release of PHP 8 and how it will impact the web development arena in the comments section below.

FAQ

Why is PHP faster?

PHP is faster because of the new asynchronous design and JIT compiler. You will be able to develop asynchronous applications in PHP 8 which is a big deal for websites.

How much faster is PHP 8?

PHP 8 is the fastest with Codeigniter, performing 8.48% more requests per second than PHP 8.0.

What is the difference between PHP 7 and PHP 8?

PHP 8 brings a lot of features, improvements, functions, and deprecations to the language as compared to PHP 7. We have discussed these in detail in the post above.

What are the new features in PHP 8?

PHP 8 comes with various new features that have been discussed in the post above. Have a look.

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