Last Month in PHP: 2015 December

From a KCPUG lightning talk given on 06 Jan 2016

December was a busy month in PHP. A major update to PHP was released, PHP-FIG approved a new PSR, major CMSes had major releases and/or were patched, and frameworks had major, minor, and patch releases.

PHP 7.0.1

PHP 7.0 was released on 3 December and was patched to 7.0.1 two weeks later. PHP 7 includes many new improvements, including:

• speed!
• Scalar type hinting
• Return type declarations (optional)
• New operators:
  • Null coalescing: ??
  • Spaceship: <=>
• Constant arrays
• Anonymous classes

See PHP 7 New Features for more information.

PSR-6 Caching Interface

PSR-6 ensures a common interface for caching support in PHP, for those libraries and frameworks that utilize it.

• Allows free-standing libraries to support caching of intermediary data without effort.
• Provides a common interface for basic and intermediate-level caching needs.

On 8 December, this passed amidst controversy.

See PSR-6 for more information.

WordPress 4.4: "Clifford"

On 8 December, the new version of WordPress, <abbr title "also known as">aka "Clifford", was released.

Some of its new features:

• Theme: Twenty-Sixteen
• Responsive images
• Ability to embed posts from:
  • Other WordPress sites
  • Other oEmbed providers (reddit, speaker deck, etc)
• WordPress REST API in Core
• Other stuff under-the-hood

WordPress 4.4 requires PHP 5.2.4+, although PHP 5.6+ is recommended.

See: WordPress 4.4 announcement for more information.

Drupal 8.0.1

Drupal 8 was released on 19 November and the first patch was released on 2 December.

New features of Drupal 8 include:

• HTML 5
• Out-of-the-box WYSIWYG editing
• Built with modern PHP practices & Libraries:
  • Composer, Symfony2, Guzzle, Twig, etc.
• REST web services

Drupal 8 requires PHP 5.5.9+.

See Drupal 8 for more information.

Slim 3.0 Microframework

Slim 3.0 was released on 7 December.

New features of Slim 3.0 include:

• Dependency Injection Container
• PSR-7 Middleware support
• Route callback binding
• Simpler codebase

Slim 3.0 requires PHP 5.5+

Symfony framework

Symfony 3.0 was released on 30 November and was patched to 3.0.1 on 26 December.

New features of Symfony 3 include:

• Locale has been supplanted by Intl
• Simplified security
• Simplified voters
• Monolog Bridge is now PSR-3 compatible
• Changes in the ways Property Access, Routing, Logging, Translator, Twig, Validator, Yaml, Process, & Swiftmailer, Config, & more are used

Symfony 3 requires PHP 5.5.9+

Patches:

• Symfony 3.0.1
• Symfony 2.8.1
• Symfony 2.7.8
• Symfony 2.3.36

Laravel 5.2 framework

Laravel 5.2 was released on 21 December.

New features of Laravel 5.2 include:

• Auth Scaffolding
• Implicit model bindingAppending output from scheduled tasks
• Form array validation
• Collections wildcards
• Database Session Driver
• Middleware Groups
• Rate Limiting
• Eloquent Global Scope

Virtual Machine: Laravel Homestead 5.2

Now with:

• PHP7
• Composer
• git

Requires PHP 5.5.9+

See: Homestead 5.2

Upcoming Conferences

Sunshine PHP Feb 4-6: Miami, FL

Midwest PHP Mar 4-5: Minneapolis, MN

Lone Star PHP Apr 7-9: Dallas, TX

php[tek] May 23-27: St Louis, MO

NomadPHP

NomadPHP is an online supplement to your in-real-life user group.

Jan 21: 01:00 PM CST Puli: PHP's Next Package Revolution

• Berhard Schussek - @webmozart

Jan 21: 08:00 PM CST Building Better APIs

• Mike Stowe - @mikegstowe