In this ever-changing world of web development, staying ahead of the game is important for businesses and developers. Enter PHP 8.x: The latest major iteration of one of the world’s most popular server-side scripting languages. Ever since its release, PHP 8.x has been taking the world of development by storm—promising better performance and syntax, along with new features that reshaped the process of building modern web applications.

Let us now get into the world of PHP 8.x development and understand what it is that has made this version a game-changer. Imagine developing web applications much faster while they become easier to write and maintain at the same time. This is what PHP 8.x brings along: not just all talk, but a reality embraced by forward-looking developers and enterprises building state-of-the-art digital experiences.

But what is so earth-shattering in these PHP 8 features? Starting with the introduction of the performance-enhancing JIT compiler and ending with more aesthetic changes, such as named arguments and union types, PHP 8.x is filled with enhancements that make the development process easier and open new possibilities for web applications.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. Realizing the full potential of PHP 8.x can be ensured not only by understanding what’s new in it but also by how best to use its new features. Here is where experience and expertise matter. DM WebSoft LLP has been one of the pioneers in the migration and implementation of PHP 8.x since its emergence. Our seasoned team has been pushing the boundaries of PHP 8.x and working toward solving different industry business needs with robust, scalable, and lightning-fast web solutions.

Now, we start our journey into PHP 8.x—not only into the exploration of technical marvels driving this engine but also deeper into the nitty-gritty of real-world applications and best practices that will up your web development game. This book is for all the PHP developers who are already up and running, willing to stack more skills into their lists, business owners inclined to upgrade into technologies, and just any curious tech enthusiast.

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In an attempt to not overly dramatize the magnitude of progress being made with PHP 8.x, we can look back for a moment at the intriguing path of PHP in general. It has been a story of constant improvement, community development, and keeping pace with the ever-changing web landscape.

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, so it most likely is a recursive acronym. PHP originated in 1994, thanks to Rasmus Lerdorf, who developed a set of CGI binaries written in C to track accesses to his online resume. By 1997, it had matured into PHP/FI 2.0, which was very widely used.

As the late ’90s and early 2000s fueled the .com explosion of the World Wide Web, PHP began to mushroom. In 3.0, there was extensibility; in 4.0, the Zend Engine; in 2004, 5.0 included improved support for object-oriented programming—a year marker. Each subsequent version dramatically built on the last: speeding performance, bulking features, and expanding capabilities.

Especially dramatic was the jump to PHP 7.0 in the year 2015; it included huge performance improvements, at large, amounting to a 100% improvement in speed of PHP 5.x applications in many cases. It also added features such as return types, scalar type declarations, null coalescing operator, and anonymous classes, amongst others. Indeed, PHP 7.x has been transforming with every minor release, packed with new functionalities and other optimizations.

Then came PHP 8.0 in November 2020, a release that would redefine what developers could expect from the language. Building on good work done by its predecessors, PHP 8.0 presents groundbreaking features such as the JIT (Just In Time) compiler, union types, named arguments, attributes, and more. What it has given is not merely better performance but also more expressiveness and friendliness to a developer in this language.

PHP 8.x has been embraced quickly and universally. According to W3Techs, in 2024 PHP is in use in 77.4% of all websites where the server-side programming language is known. Big credit goes to PHP 8.x for such high adoption.

We’ve been riding this evolution wave since the early days at DM WebSoft LLP. Our team has grown with PHP, sharpening our skills with every new release. The broad, deep, and historical understanding of PHP’s journey makes us capable of using the power of PHP 8.x to its fullest in ways few others possibly can. We are not only a PHP 8.x user; we know its DNA, what it’s capable of, and how it integrates into the bigger picture of web development.

The journey of PHP to 8.x reflects not just one technical breakthrough after another, but the changing necessities that the world of web developers and businesses have set toward a direction that gets more digital and tangled. Web applications have become very dynamic and complex, with the demand for better performance, security, and a more intuitive development process. PHP has not risen to these challenges; it is worthy of mention.

In fact, the future of PHP beyond 8.x is very promising. The large PHP community, agile and responsive, usually spends its days and nights considering refinements and new features to be included. As we stand on the brink of this exciting future, there is one thing that becomes all too clear: Mastering PHP 8.x isn’t just about keeping up with the now; it’s about being ready for what comes next in web development.

We will elaborate a bit more on what makes PHP 8.x a game-changer with unique features, best practices in how to use its new abilities, and real-world examples of how businesses are using PHP 8.x for innovation and efficiency. So, stay put as we unravel the power of PHP 8.x and how this could potentially turn around your web development projects.

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Since PHP 8.x was released, it feels like a treasure trove of new functionalities and enhancements, significantly increasing the capabilities of the language. Let’s dive into the top 10 features that make PHP development different, reshaping it with several benefits for your projects.

JIT Compiler: Probably the most revolutionary feature in PHP 8.x is that of a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler for PHP. Such an addition can help compile PHP code into machine code at runtime, which should have its own performance value improved, especially in computational tasks.

We’ve seen the JIT compiler doing pretty well on some pretty complicated calculations and data processing on a few projects at DM WebSoft LLP. For example, an increase in the most compute-intensive operations in a financial application we developed is by 30% after upgrading to PHP 8.x and optimizing for the JIT compiler.

Named Arguments: Named arguments are a facility for passing the values of the named parameters, thus making function calls more readable and less prone to error. This turns out to be particularly useful when dealing with functions that have many optional arguments.

This improvement in syntax has done wonders for maintaining large codebases because it really boosts code clarity and also reduces the likelihood of making a mistake with the order of parameters.

Union Types: Union types give a way to declare more than one type that can be taken by a single parameter or returned value. It provides better type safety and minimizes the need for type-checking boilerplate code.

Union types have proved very useful in API development where input data type can vary based on different client implementations.

Nullsafe Operator: The nullsafe operator (?->) allows you to safely chain method calls, removing the need for null checks every time. It makes the code so much less defensive.

It is an elegant syntax that has helped make our code more concise and readable, especially when handling complex object hierarchies in large applications.

Match Expression: The match expression is an enhanced version of the switch statement, which gives a more potent and expressive approach to dealing with conditional branching.

We have often found that the match expression helps in refactoring legacy code into much clearer, and often terser and more readable, constructs than long if-else chains.

Constructor Property Promotion

This feature supports the specification and initialization in the constructor itself, thereby avoiding boilerplate code.

At DM WebSoft LLP, we embraced this feature in our newer projects and found that it not only led to clean, easily maintainable code but actually became the go-to method for Data Transfer Objects and simple Value Objects.

Attributes: Attributes provide an intuitive approach to adding metadata to classes, properties, methods, functions, and more—they are replacements for docblock annotations in many cases.

Performance is the king of web development: faster websites and applications result in better user experiences, higher SEO rankings, and ultimately more conversions. That is exactly where PHP 8.x comes with increased performance, packed with a serious punch in competitiveness for your web projects.

Now let’s find the devil in those performance improvement details and line them up under real-world use.

Benchmarks and Comparison Against PHP 7: Moving from PHP 7 to PHP 8.x brought with it many changes in performance. By most measures, including our benchmarks here at DM WebSoft LLP, PHP 8.x, out of the box, shows an average performance improvement of about 10-20% against PHP 7.4.

The real game-changer is the JIT compiler: Some use cases, especially when CPU-bound, will show a performance increase of up to 50%! Bear in mind that JIT usually doesn’t bring positive changes for ordinary web applications, which are bound by I/O considerably more than by the central processing unit. However, for complex calculations, data crunching, or machine-learning work, the difference is really stunning.

Below is a fast comparison that we reviewed for a normal job of data processing:

• PHP 7.4: 100 seconds
• PHP 8.0 without JIT: 85 seconds
• PHP 8.0 with JIT: 60 seconds
• It is 40% faster on PHP 8.0 with JIT enabled than on PHP 7.4

Real-World Performance Enhancements: But benchmarks only tell a fraction of what really matters: how these improvements translate into real-world applications. Here at DM WebSoft LLP, we’ve been stunned by some of the results of migrating client projects into PHP 8.x

E-commerce Site: After upgrading a high-traffic e-commerce website to PHP 8.1, we saw a 25% drop in mean page load time. This resulted in a 15% increase in pages per session and a 7% bump in conversion rates.

Content Management System (CMS): The CMS of a media company provided evidence that its content indexing speed improved by 30% after upgrading, helping them deal with breaking news stories more swiftly.

API Services: For one of our fintech clients, we increased the efficiency of their APIs by 20%. Now they can handle more transactions per second on their servers without scaling resources.

Resource Impact on Server and Cost: Performance improvements in PHP 8.x not only make applications faster but can be cost-saving. More often than not, better performance means being able to handle the same load with fewer resources on your server.

In one such case, we managed to reduce the cost of cloud computing for a client by 35% after optimizing their application for PHP 8.x. The developed efficiency allowed scaling back of infrastructure without performance or user experience suffering.

Besides, this usually ends up with less CPU usage, meaning, of course, lower energy use—not bad for the budget, not bad for green computing initiatives.

What should be noted here is that such performance improvements are usually not achievable with a simple upgrade. Here at DM WebSoft LLP, we match the upgrading process with the optimization and thorough code review phase to ensure each application fully benefits from what PHP 8.x has to offer.

In the upcoming chapters, we’ll consider some best practices in PHP 8.x development, which will help us extract maximum performance from applications developed in this programming language. Stay tuned to learn how you may use these enhancements to create lightning-fast, efficient web solutions.

We have successfully used PHP 8.x microservices that can communicate with both RESTful APIs and message queues.

Containerization: PHP 8.x runs seamlessly in today’s containerization technologies like Docker, easing its deployment, scaling, and management within enterprise applications.

Serverless Computing: Being fast during startup and consuming resources in a very optimized way, PHP 8.x fits well in serverless environments. We have deployed PHP 8.x functions on serverless platforms like AWS Lambda, bringing cost efficiency and scalability to our enterprise clients.

Long-Term Support and Maintenance Advantages

Using PHP 8.x for your enterprise applications brings much more than an immediate win; it’s an investment in the future.

• Long-Term Support: PHP 8.x versions come with long-term support, so the applications developed will continue to get critical updates and security patches for years to come.
• Community and Ecosystem: A large PHP community and the great ecosystem of libraries and frameworks together help make enterprise applications based on a wide range of well-maintained resources.
• Talent Pool: The popularity of PHP means that a huge pool of developers experienced in it exists, making creating new enterprise teams or rebuilding them easier.

DM WebSoft LLP has been guiding dozens of businesses either migrating to or upgrading to PHP 8.x. From financial institutions handling millions of transactions a day to e-commerce sites supporting peak holiday traffic, PHP 8.x has left impressive marks on the enterprise.

Another logistics customer found its routing algorithms boosted by 30% after upgrading to PHP 8.x. In other words, that’s massive fuel savings and more consistently managed delivery times. That is, in fact, the level of real-world results that enterprises can realize with PHP 8.x.

Going further, PHP 8.x will definitely not lose its mighty position among strong competitors in the enterprise field. These qualities — performance, scalability, and friendliness to developers — bundle up into an exciting opportunity for businesses to build something big and future-proof.

In the next chapter, we’ll cover a few more PHP 8.x development practices in detail that are part of DM WebSoft LLP, fine-tuned from years of experience in delivering high-end, PHP-based solutions.

For businesses planning website development, understanding the costs of PHP 8.x development is essential. At DM WebSoft LLP, we believe in transparency, so let’s break down the cost drivers and provide some ballpark figures based on our experience.

Cost Drivers

• Project Complexity: The more complex the app, the higher the development cost. A simple brochure website will cost much less than a full e-commerce platform or custom enterprise solution.
• Functionality: Every new feature adds to development complexity and time, raising costs. Advanced features like real-time data processing or integration with numerous third-party services can increase the overall project cost significantly.
• Design Needs: Intricate and custom designs require more front-end development time, driving up costs.
• Scalability Requirements: High traffic or large data volumes require robust architecture from the start, increasing the initial investment.
• System Integration: Integration with existing systems and APIs can be time-consuming and expensive.
• Team Experience: More experienced PHP 8.x developers charge higher hourly rates but often deliver better quality and efficiency.

Common Project Schedules

Timelines vary based on the factors above, but here are some rough estimates:

• Small Projects (e.g., simple websites, CRUD apps): 1-2 months
• Mid-Range Projects (e.g., custom CMS, small e-commerce sites): 2-4 months
• Major Projects (e.g., large enterprise applications, complex e-commerce platforms): 4-8 months or more

Expected Costs

While every project is unique, here are some rough cost estimates based on our experience:

Simple Web Application

• Cost Range: $20,000 – $40,000
• Timeline: 1-2 months
• Features: Basic CRUD operations, user authentication, simple database integration

Mid-level Web Application

• Cost Range: $40,000 – $80,000
• Timeline: 2-4 months
• Features: Advanced business logic, complex database operations, simple API integrations

Enterprise Web Application

• Cost Range: $80,000 – $150,000+
• Timeline: 4-8 months or more
• Features: Scalable architecture, advanced security, multiple third-party integrations, complex workflows

ROI Considerations for Businesses

• Improved Performance: PHP 8.x’s performance enhancements can provide a faster, better user experience, potentially improving conversion rates.
• Scalability: A well-built PHP 8.x application can grow with your business, reducing the need for costly rewrites later.
• Maintenance Costs: Clean, well-structured PHP 8.x code is easier to maintain, potentially reducing long-term maintenance costs.
• Competitive Advantage: Leveraging PHP 8.x’s advanced features can help your application stand out from competitors using older technology.

As evident from the whole article, PHP 8.x is truly another step in technology for web development. With features like JIT compiler and union types, among others, PHP 8.x will put tools into the hands of developers and businesses for delivering much faster web applications with higher efficiency and maintainability.

Masters in PHP 8.x should be at par in an ever-learning and adaptive process because the web ecosystem remains dynamic. The modern web ecosystem has found PHP at its epicenter, fueling relevance with seamless adaptability from a simple website to the most complex enterprise applications.

We at DM WebSoft LLP are committed to full-force use of PHP 8.x to provide state-of-the-art solutions to our clients. Whether that means updating an already-existing application, building a new project from the ground up, or you’re just considering how PHP 8.x can help your business, we’re here for you.

Get excited to use PHP 8.x for your next web project. Do not wait another second; unlock the possibilities of this technology today. Please let DM WebSoft LLP know if there is a possibility that we can make your vision of web development a reality together. With you, build a solution that’s faster, smarter, and more productive. Get ready for the future of web development.