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Learning PHP 7 High Performance
Learning PHP 7 High Performance

Learning PHP 7 High Performance: Improve the performance of your PHP application to ensure the application users aren't left waiting

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Learning PHP 7 High Performance

Chapter 2. New Features in PHP 7

PHP 7 has introduced new features that can help programmers write high-performing and effective code. Also, some old-fashioned features are completely removed, and PHP 7 will throw an error if used. Most of the fatal errors are now exceptions, so PHP won't show an ugly fatal error message any more; instead, it will go through an exception with the available details.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Type hints
  • Namespaces and group use declarations
  • The anonymous classes
  • Old-style constructor deprecation
  • The Spaceship operator
  • The null coalesce operator
  • Uniform variable syntax
  • Miscellaneous changes

OOP features

PHP 7 introduced a few new OOP features that will enable developers to write clean and effective code. In this section, we will discuss these features.

Type hints

Prior to PHP 7, there was no need to declare the data type of the arguments passed to a function or class method. Also, there was no need to mention the return data type. Any data type can be passed to and returned from a function or method. This is one of the huge problems in PHP, in which it is not always clear which data types should be passed or received from a function or method. To fix this problem, PHP 7 introduced type hints. As of now, two type hints are introduced: scalar and return type hints. These are discussed in the following sections.

Type hints is a feature in both OOP and procedural PHP because it can be used for both procedural functions and object methods.

Scalar type hints

PHP 7 made it possible to use scalar type hints for integers, floats, strings, and Booleans for both functions and methods. Let...

New operators

PHP 7 introduced two interested operators. These operators can help write less and cleaner code, so the final code will be more readable as compared to the traditional operators in use. Let's have a look at them.

The Spaceship operator (<=>)

The Spaceship or Combined Comparison operator is useful to compare values (strings, integers, floats, and so on), arrays, and objects. This operator is just a wrapper and performs the same tasks as the three comparison operators ==, <, and >. This operator can also be used to write clean and less code for callback functions for usort, uasort, and uksort. This operator works as follows:

  • It returns 0 if both the operands on left- and right-hand sides are equal
  • It returns -1 if the right operand is greater than the left operand
  • It returns 1 if the left operand is greater than the right one

Let's take a look at a few examples by comparing integers, strings, objects, and arrays and note the result:

$int1 = 1;
$int2 = 2;
$int3...

Uniform variable syntax

Most of the time, we may face a situation in which the method, variable, or classes names are stored in other variables. Take a look at the following example:

$objects['class']->name;

In the preceding code, first, $objects['class'] will be interpreted, and after this, the property name will be interpreted. As shown in the preceding example, variables are normally evaluated from left to right.

Now, consider the following scenario:

$first = ['name' => 'second'];
$second = 'Howdy';

echo $$first['name'];

In PHP 5.x, this code would be executed, and the output would be Howdy. However, this is not inconsistent with the left-to-right expression evaluation. This is because $$first should be evaluated first and then the index name, but in the preceding case, it is evaluated as ${$first['name']}. It is clear that the variable syntax is not consistent and may create confusion. To avoid this inconsistency...

Miscellaneous features and changes

PHP 7 also introduced some other new features with small changes, such as new syntax for array constants, multiple default cases in switch statement, options array in session_start, and so on. Let's have a look at these too.

Constant arrays

Starting with PHP 5.6, constant arrays can be initialized using the const keyword, as follows:

const STORES = ['en', 'fr', 'ar'];

Now, starting with PHP 7, constant arrays can be initialized using the define function, as follows:

define('STORES', ['en', 'fr', 'ar']);

Multiple default cases in the switch statement

Prior to PHP 7, multiple default cases in a switch statement were allowed. Check out the following example:

switch(true)
{
  default: 
    echo 'I am first one';
    break;
  default: 
    echo 'I am second one';
}

Before PHP 7, the preceding code was allowed, but in PHP 7, this will result in a fatal error similar to the...

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed new OOP features, such as type hints, anonymous classes, the throwable interface, group use declaration for namespaces, and two important new operators, the Spaceship or Combined Comparison operator and the null Coalesce operator. Also, we discussed the uniform variable syntax and a few other new features, such as new syntax for the contact array definition, options array for the session_start() function, and removal of multiple default cases in the switch statement.

In the next chapter, we will discuss how to improve the application's performance. We will discuss Apache and NGINX and different settings for them to improve performance.

We will discuss different settings for PHP to improve its performance. The Google page speed module, CSS/JavaScript combining and compression, CDN, and so on will also be discussed.

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Key benefits

  • Make the optimum use of PHP coding to improve your programming productivity
  • Leverage the potential of PHP for server-side programming, memory management, and object-oriented programming
  • Packed with real-life examples to help the readers implement concepts as they learn

Description

PHP is a great language for building web applications. It is essentially a server-side scripting language that is also used for general-purpose programming. PHP 7 is the latest version, providing major backward-compatibility breaks and focusing on high performance and speed. This fast-paced introduction to PHP 7 will improve your productivity and coding skills. The concepts covered will allow you, as a PHP programmer, to improve the performance standards of your applications. We will introduce you to the new features in PHP 7 and then will run through the concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP) in PHP 7. Next, we will shed some light on how to improve your PHP 7 applications' performance and database performance. Through this book, you will be able to improve the performance of your programs using the various benchmarking tools discussed. At the end, the book discusses some best practices in PHP programming to help you improve the quality of your code.

Who is this book for?

This book is for those who have basic experience in PHP programming. If you are developing performance-critical applications, then this book is for you.

What you will learn

  • ? Setup high performance development and
  • production environment for PHP 7
  • ? Discover new OOP features in PHP 7 to
  • achieve high performance
  • ? Improve your PHP applications performance
  • ? Attain improved database performance
  • ? Benchmark PHP applications to optimize them
  • ? Write quality code by learning to improve code
  • reusability, simplicity, and expressiveness
  • ? Get rid of the bottlenecks in your PHP 7
  • applications by writing PHP code optimally
  • ? Tackle issues related to web applications, such
  • as high user dependency and large datasets
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Publication date : Apr 25, 2016
Length: 202 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785882265
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Product Details

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Length: 202 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785882265
Category :
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Table of Contents

10 Chapters
1. Setting Up the Environment Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. New Features in PHP 7 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Improving PHP 7 Application Performance Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Improving Database Performance Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Debugging and Profiling Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Stress/Load Testing PHP Applications Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Best Practices in PHP Programming Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A. Tools to Make Life Easy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
B. MVC and Frameworks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
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