PHP 5.4 is Released — What’s New?

It’s difficult to believe almost three years have elapsed since PHP 5.3.0. The next version should have been PHP 6.0 but unicode problems have delayed development. This latest version provides many of the features planned for version 6.0.

PHP 5.4 is available to download from the php.net website. There’s a PHP 5.3 migration guide if you want to keep your old settings. While it’s stable, you’d be advised to test your sites and applications before installing it on live servers. The PHP team often release a bug-fix version a few weeks after the initial release.

So let’s look at the best new features and improvements…

Short Array Syntax

It’s now possible to use finger-saving JavaScript-like square brackets rather than using the old array(…)construct, e.g.

$array1 = [1, 2, 3];
$array2 = [
 "one" => "first",
 "two" => "second",
 "three" => "third"
];

Traits

Traits reduce some limitations of single inheritance. In essence, traits are similar to abstract classes and can contain any number of properties and methods. A class can then use any number of traits, e.g.

trait Hello
{
    function sayHello() {
        return "Hello";
    }
}
trait World
{
    function sayWorld() {
        return "World";
    }
}
class MyWorld
{
    use Hello, World;
}
$world = new MyWorld();
echo $world->sayHello() . ' ' . $world->sayWorld();

For more information, refer to Using Traits in PHP 5.4 on PHPmaster.com.

Built-in Web Server

PHP 5.4 offers a built-in web server which runs from the Windows, Mac or Linux command line. While it’s not Apache or IIS, it’s fine for simple testing. I suspect many of the better PHP IDEs will implement support shortly.

For more information, refer to PHP 5.4′s New Built-in Web Server.