What's new in PHP 7.4

With the release of PHP 7.4, we get some new features and improvements. Let's take a look at all of those in this episode.

Documentation

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[ThePublicTutorials]

2:30 Allow exceptions from __toString()
4:30 Typed properties
8:56 Arrow function notation
13:06 Improvements to arrays
16:01 Unpacking inside arrays or Spread syntax (JS)
19:43 __serialize() & __unserliaze()

[welt]

15:38 PhpStorm 2019.3 has full support. You need to switch to PHP 7.4 language level in Settings. Btw nice video.

[KeganVanSickle]

Great overview Victor! I agree, the array spread operation should consider the keys. Hopefully they change that in an upcoming release.

[saletra]

You can marge your arrays with simple "+" sign, eg. ['key1' => "orange", 'key2' => "apple"] + ['key1' => "banana", 'key3' => "strawberry"] --> ['key1' => "banana", 'key2' => "apple", 'key3' => "strawberry"]

[XGhozt.]

Nice overview! Just a side note, I believe the word you're looking for is "instantiate" instead of "newing up".

[EduardoWeidmanBarijan]

One thing is to read about the new stuff. The other thing is to actually see the new stuff in action. Thank you so much for doing this and even comparing with 7.3

[azengakevin]

I don't know what took me so long to figure that php is this great, most of the time I come across cool features when they already have a replacement, I guess not this time round, thanks guru

[jascooly]

Another amazingly clear video! 👌🏻
I don't know how other people perceive this but seeing the spread like this for the first time I kinda assume that it meant 'add to array' and not 'merge arrays'. Spreading would not suggest to me that values could be lost or merged. But maybe it's just how I'm used to kinda using it.
I already sought out most of the php7.4 features but I keep finding myself looking at your video's on subjects "I think I know". Even when I do, I always find out at least one nifty tip or trick!
Would have been very useful if I knew about this channel at the time. So I can't wait to see your "what's new in PHP 8" video! 😃

[RoyRope]

Yaay finally arrow function support in PHP, awesome.

[WoodymC]

* First of all, this is a great intro to the new PHP 7.4 features. Still, may I recommend to use "header('Content-Type: text/plain; Charset=UTF-8')" + "var_dump()" for presentational purposes in favor of stupid "print_r()"? This has the great advantage of making structural and type information visbile at a glance.
* I think that array unpacking was NOT intended to be a replacement for array_merge(). For those of you who made use of function parameter unpacking using the "..." ellipsis operator, it feels more like transferring that paradigm to arrays as well. The most practical advantage of it was not named here, but is shown in the PHP release notes: The injected array can be unpacked/inserted at an arbitrary bucket position of the source array, which traditionally would need some array_merge(array_slice($source, ...), $injected, array_slice($source, ...)) workarounds.
* Serialization in fact already HAD a similar mechanism using the __sleep() and __wakeup() magic methods. The difference is that these could only be used to limit the properties to be serialized by name, without any further control of custom names and/or values to be used during customization. Since they had to change the data format of the return value for these automagics, they had to come up with new names. (Thankfully, they now chose the ones that I always expected to have when dealing with serialization, i.e. "__[un]serialize()").

[raphahardt]

17:22 this implementation makes totally sense to me and imho must still this way.
The array keys is becoming 20, 21 and 22 because on the creation of the array, the first index dictates the later elements keys in numerical order. When you unpack an array, you expect to get only the values, not the keys. When you unpack the array inside a new array (which is the case in your example) is expected to get this exactly result, because is equivalent you doing this: [20 => 'orange', 'banana', 'apple']
This new syntax should not be considered "merge two arrays". For this, imho, we still need to use array_merge()

Nice video tho, glad to see in my recommended

[stamoulohta]

You can merge arrays without the duplicate keys just by using the '+' operator though. ;)

[jurgenkranenburg]

the implementation of the spread operator has been changed so it functions the way you expect in recent versions php

[yujj]

From Php 7 onwards, you can do:
$array['key''] = $array['key'] ?? 'whatever';

[baderelhayah]

Thanks, you really have a good & easy way for explaining complicated stuff, I hope you make a new course about advanced core php

[jeremyperret]

Hi,

The "little bit of inconsistency" you talk about at 7:50, I think it is because you missing the `declare(strict_types=1);` in your file.

> By default, PHP will coerce values of the wrong type into the expected scalar type if possible. For example, a function that is given an integer a parameter that expects a string will get a variable of type string.
>

Great video

[opuu]

15:53 this is something I will use a lot!

[StefanEideloth]

one of the better "What's new" videos on youtube :) thanks for that :)

[therealgunny]

the null coalescing assignment operator was interesting

[gnulinux]

When a PHP course? thanks for your work!