Learning about changes to XML extensions

XML version 1.0 was introduced as a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specification in 1998. XML bears some resemblance to HyperText Markup Language (HTML); however, the main purpose of XML is to provide a way to format data that's readable to both machines and humans. One of the reasons why XML is still widely used is because it's easily understandable and does a stellar job at representing tree-structured data.

PHP provides a number of extensions that allow you to both consume and produce XML documents. There have been a few changes introduced to many of these extensions in PHP 8. For the most part, these changes are minor; however, it's important to be aware of these changes if you wish to be a well-rounded and informed PHP developer.

Let's first have a look at changes to the XMLWriter extension.

Examining XMLWriter extension differences

All XMLWriter extension procedural functions now accept and return XMLWriter...