PHP 8.2's Subtle New Features

PHP version 8.2 was released on December 8, 2022 and I'm sure you've already heard about the great new features. The Randomizer & random generator engines classes, DNF types; constants within traits; the sensitive parameter trait; static return types for dates; the n regular expression modifier; false, true, and null types; the readonly class modifier, a handful of deprecations, and a small performance bump.

These features are great. They add some new things to play with, fix a few issues, and provide the usual speed boost. What about the more subtle features that aren't reported on. They need some love too.

phpinfo()'s Visual Upgrade

The first thing I will go over is a feature that doesn't appear to be reported on anywhere. Not even in the changelog. Why?

The phpinfo() function got a facelift. It now supports dark mode using the OS and browser's CSS prefers-color-scheme media query. There is also now sticky headers for tables. The headers will stay at the top of the screen while you continue scrolling.

Here is a screen capture of phpinfo():

Some other new features that go unnoticed...

• Opimized code path for newly created files using the file:// stream wrapper.
• Lower memory usage for strings created by various different functions.
• Added support for curl's CURLOPT_XFERINFOFUNCTION progress callback option. This replaces the deprecated CURLOPT_PROGRESSFUNCTION option.
• Added support for curl's CURLOPT_MAXFILESIZE_LARGE option which sould be used instead of CURLOPT_MAXFILESIZE in cases where the file is greater than 2 gigabytes.
• Added curl_upkeep(callable) function that accepts a callable (function/method) and is used when HTTP2 keep-alive/ping requests are sent.
• The idate(format, timestamp) function now supports the "N" and "o" specifiers to get the ISO day of week and ISO year respectively.
• Added the FILTER_FLAG_GLOBAL_RANGE option when validating with the FILTER_VALIDATE_IP flag in the filter functions. The filter will fail when non-global IPV4/IPV6 IP ranges are used in accordance with RFC 6890 where the Global attribute is false.
• A number of Apple Mac-specific memory and JIT compiler-related improvements.
• Added JIT indirect call reduction.
• Added the openssl_cipher_key_length(algorithm) function.
• Added the ReflectionFunction::isAnonymous() method which returns true if the function is anonymous (e.g. a closure).
• Added the ReflectionMethod::hasPrototype() method which returns true if the method has an inherited parent method (prototype).
• Added a number of new Socket options.
• Added ini_parse_quantity(string_value) function to convert parsed shorthand ini values that may include a number of supported units to integer value.
• Added memory_reset_peak_usage() function to allow checking for excess memory usage multiple times throughout a script.

Upgrade Soon!

PHP 8.2 has many features that will make development and testing with PHP easier. It's easy to overlook the more suble and less-reported-on features, but they are often some of the more useful or awaited changes. It's highly reccomended that you upgrade to version 8.2 soon and always keep your software versions up-to-date to get the latest features and security fixes.