PHP 7 is a major release of PHP programming language and is touted to be a revolution in the way web applications can be developed and delivered for mobile to enterprises and the cloud.

PHP 7 offers a 100% improvement in performance speed over its previous PHP 5.6 version. The reason to develop PHP 7 is to make scripting languages run more efficiently. Comparing to PHP 5.6, PHP 7 has reduced demands on servers, making it more cost-effective and an environment-friendly choice as less energy is required to power servers running PHP 7 applications.

New Features

There are dozens of features added to PHP 7, the most significant ones are mentioned below −

  1. Better performance − Having PHPNG code merged in PHP7, it is twice as fast as PHP 5.
  2. Lower Memory Consumption − Optimized PHP 7 utilizes lesser resource.
  3. Scalar type declarations − Now parameter and return types can be enforced.
  4. Consistent 64-bit support − Consistent support for 64-bit architecture machines.
  5. Improved Exception hierarchy − Exception hierarchy is improved.
  6. Many fatal errors converted to Exceptions − Range of exceptions is increased covering many fatal error converted as exceptions.
  7. Secure random number generator − Addition of new secure random number generator API.
  8. Deprecated SAPIs and extensions removed − Various old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions are removed from the latest version.
  9. The null coalescing operator (??) − New null coalescing operator added.
  10. Return and Scalar Type Declarations − Support for return type and parameter type added.
  11. Anonymous Classes − Support for anonymous added.
  12. Zero cost asserts − Support for zero cost assert added.

PHP 7 uses new Zend Engine 3.0 to improve application performance almost twice and 50% better memory consumption than PHP 5.6. It allows to serve more concurrent users without requiring any additional hardware. PHP 7 is designed and refactored considering today’s workloads.

Conclusion:

PHP 7 is the future of PHP and all the applications will need to upgrade to PHP 7 sooner or later. You can check that are you out dated or upgrade from the above image.