Last modified: August 30, 2024

Overview

This document discusses the key changes and limitations of PHP 8 in EasyApache 4. PHP 8 is the most recent major version released by php.net. It provides a number of updates and improvements over previous versions of PHP.

For a complete list of changes, including the new features and any breaking changes, read PHP’s Upgrade Notes.

Benefits of PHP 8

PHP 8 adds the following features:

• Support for Union types — Union types allow you to assign multiple types to a parameter, property, or return.
• The Just in Time (JIT) compiler — The JIT compiler will compile parts of your code at runtime, in order to improve the response time of your web pages.
• Named arguments — Named arguments allow you to assign a name to input data and call that in your code, rather than the order of the argument.
• Attributes — Attributes act as an annotation in your PHP code, which allows you to add metadata.

Currently unavailable in PHP 8

The following extensions and modules are not currently available for PHP 8:

• PHP-PSR
• Snuffleupagus
• Phalcon 4
• ionCube 10
• ionCube 11
• Memcache

Incompatible with PHP 8

The following software currently does not work with PHP 8. This list is not comprehensive.

• DSO — cPanel & WHM does not support the DSO handler with PHP 8.0 and higher.
• The XMLRPC extensions — This extension moved to PECL.
• The JSON extension — This functionality is included in PHP 8 by default.