The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) serves as a server-side scripting language utilized for web development and also finds application as a general programming language. It allows developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases and used for developing web-based software applications. It is fast, pragmatic, flexible, and powers everything from the blog to the popular websites in the world.
The PHP Group now produces the reference implementation of PHP, which was originally a small open source project that Rasmus Lerdorf created in 1994. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page. Now it stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, which is a recursive backronym.
Some very important characteristics of PHP are its Efficiency, Simplicity, Flexibility, Security and Familiarity.
Till Date PHP versions:
- To accelerate bug location and improve the code, the PHP team released version 1.0 publicly.
- Version 2 grew organically and the team officially released it in November 1997.
- In 1997, the rewriting formed the base of PHP 3 and changed the name of the language to PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. The official launch occurred in June 1998.
- In 1999, developers initiated the next rewriting, leading to the release of PHP 4 in May 2000, powered by Zend Engine 1.0. It progressed to version 4.4.9 by August 2008, at which point development ceased.
- The new Zend Engine II powered the launch of PHP 5 in July 2004. In 2008, PHP 5 became the only stable version under development.
- In 2005, developers initiated the PHP 6 project to bring native Unicode support throughout PHP. However, due to a shortage of developers and performance problems, they officially abandoned the PHP 6 project in March 2010.
- The latest major version is PHP 7.0.0, which has its foundations derived from an experimental PHP branch originally named ‘phpng’ (PHP next generation). It aims at optimizing PHP performance by refactoring the Zend engine while retaining near-complete language compatibility.
PHP 7.0.0 and its release in 2015
PHP 7.0.0 RC 7, introduced on November 12, 2015, marked a significant shift with major internal changes in ‘phpng’. This pre-release signifies a new major version instead of a minor 5.x update, offering developers a beta stage for testing and reporting bugs. If no major issues arise during the two-week testing period from the release of RC 7, PHP 7.0.0 will be launched.
Important new features of PHP 7.0.0
- Combined Comparison Operator (< = >): A new operator will come with PHP 7, which developers can use for combined comparisons, particularly when dealing with sorting.
- Improved Performance: PHP 7 is based on the phpng project that was developed to speed up PHP applications. The performance gains from PHP 7 will be huge! It varies from 25% to 70% on real-world apps.
- Return Type and Scalar Type Declarations: PHP 7 will allow developers to declare what kind of return type a function is expected to have. It is similar to argument Type Hints. Also, argument type hints and the return type declarations now support the new scalar type. Developers can denote that they expect strings, floats, ints, or bools to be passed or returned.
- When it was open sourced and later merged into PHP 7, phpng doubled its performance in many cases, effectively executing tasks such as the WordPress homepage, which required approximately 9.4 billion CPU instructions when phpng was published. But now, it requires only 2.6 billion – that’s 72% less.
- AST – Abstract Syntax Tree: An AST will provide many advantages including the potential for more optimizations that would make PHP run even faster.
- Asynchronous Programming: It would allow future PHP versions to easily implement support to the execution of parallel tasks within the same request. It will push its performance level to a completely different level.
Some more exciting features are:
- Consistent 64-bit support
- Many fatal errors are now Exceptions
- The null coalescing operator
- Removal of old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions
- Anonymous Classes
The latest developments of the PHP language has certainly been very exciting.
Krify has consummated innumerable projects of development with PHP programming. Our development team is longing for arrival of new PHP 7.0.0 to utilize it to develop exciting IT products.
Do you know who are Professional Developers of Hybrid Apps using PHP 7 ?
Krify has consummated innumerable projects of development with PHP programming. They have competence in building IT products using PHP. Arrival of PHP 7 with new exciting features will bring storm in the domain of app and web development.
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How to hire a PHP Developer / Hybrid Apps Development Company ?
If you are in need of experienced PHP developers, Krify has a team of PHP developers who have sound knowledge on PHP 7 and experience of working on multiple projects for our clients in Europe and USA. They have hands on experience in website development. We don’t compromise on quality and believe in delivering the projects within the timelines framed. Our team of developers are flexible to work in multiple time zones to suit the needs of our international clients.
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