PHP 5 RC 1 released

An anonymous reader writes "PHP just released the first release candidate of PHP 5 after 4 beta releases. It is considered stable and feature-complete -- so get testing!"

Comments

significant changes

[berkleyidiot]

be careful upgrading, as the semantics regarding object assignment have changed from copy to reference. i know some of my code would make use of the old copy-on-assignment semantics.

other than that, looks like version 5 introduces some cool stuff, ala java. abstract classes, exceptions, method visibility, and interfaces to name a few. can't wait to give it a try.

Re:significant changes

[T3kno]

All of the XML stuff has changed as well, I found that out while going through the Core PHP, which has been *cough* updated *cough* to cover PHP5. They forgot to mention that they were talking August 2003 PHP5, AKA PHP5 before libxml2.

The nice thing is that it nearly completely models the functions listed in the w3c recomendation for the DOM Level 3 Core, which are also nearly identical to the XML::LibXML module in Perl.

So, IHMO PHP5 = Good, Core PHP 3ed = Bad!

Re:PHP in comparision to others

[Charles Dart]

PHP is very fast and easy to use. The php.net website has great documentation. With the PEAR extension database abstraction is possible making all your data functions totally portable. As for quick hacks php can be run on the command line which is very quick and very hackey. I have been using it for years in tandem with MySQL and find that it meets all my needs (except for the fact that MySQL doesn't have nested queries but that is coming in the next release and I will be a happy man!) I also know JSP and Oracle but prefer PHP/MySQL by far.

Re:Power Power Power

[Anonymous Crowhead]

It's in the design.

Yep. And if you inline presentation and data in a complicated web app, that's bad design.

Re:Safety?

[Wonko42]

PHP is a weakly-typed language by design, not because they haven't gotten around to implementing type checking yet. If you're feeling insecure about your code, you can always explicitly typecast your variables or use the settype function to calm your nerves.

I've been using PHP extensively for years now and I can't say I've ever run into a problem with its handling of data types. Let's not forget that PHP is, after all, a scripting language.

Re:Power Power Power

[justMichael]

Do yourself a favor and do not mix business and presentation...

Somewhere down the line you are going to have a person working on design that doesn't understand PHP and breaks something. Then you can either spend who knows how long to figure out what is broken or throw out their work and just roll back to what's under revision control (you use revision control, right?). Either way you wasted time. Or worst case, nobody notices the logic is broken and it makes it to production.

Go find a template engine that you like and use it. You'll be happy in the long run.

Here's a couple to get you started.

PHPLib
Smarty

Here you go

[jbellis]

Speed: they're all "fast enough." All of these scale well enough that for most sites you won't care, and none of them really scale well enough to support something like cnn.com. [Read through the archives to get a feel for the pain /. has to go through to serve its audience, for instance. And /. isn't even THAT big.] No flame; just that all these options are low/middle end.

Ease of use:

Classic ASP is pretty close to Perl. ASP.NET is a rather different paradigm, with a slightly steeper learning curve but more than enough added power to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately ASP.NET is a classic "leaky abstraction;" it tries to make things simple that sometimes aren't, and this will bite you.

Perl: it's nearly impossible to maintain a substantial site in perl with multiple developers working on the code. The language works against you here. Again, /. is a case in point. There's a reason /. doesn't upgrade to the latest & greatest very often.

JSP: takes a PHP-ish approach but Java is a statically typed language which makes using it for web apps _extremely_ verbose in comparison to the other languages here.

Javascript: poor fit for server-side use. Nobody does anything serious with it that way.

Verdict: They all suck to one degree or another. It's heresy on /. I know, but of these, ASP.NET is probably the best choice. If you want a toolkit/language that won't make site maintenance hell, OpenACS (tcl) or Zope (python) is probably a better bet. If you want something that will scale to absolutely huge levels (like the aforementioned CNN), J2EE is about the only game in town. (But a living hell to code for -- not recommended for smaller projects!)

Re:Here you go

[flocculent]

While I agree with the rest of your comments it's not really true to say that ASP/PHP/etc won't scale to the size of a site like cnn.com. They may not always be your best choice of language, but they do fit certain niches rather well. In general, for a website to scale well, the overall system/software design is much more important than choice of language/environment. (Though it's true that j2ee app servers give you a big headstart here)

Whether a website will scale to cnn like levels is dependent on quite a few factors... two of the main ones that come to mind are:

a) How much work the site has to do to build a page (think basic marketing website vs an online banking site)
b) Sensible overall design (both code and network/hardware).

A well built PHP site (i.e many servers load balanced, well cached page content, intelligently coded to scale from the outset) will scale to whatever you like, at least for cnn type content which is easily cached.

I worked on one of the very few major news websites that coped with Sept11th traffic, and that website was developed using Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL. (we only just coped mind you! ;)

I remember reading a while back that yahoo use PHP for various bits and pieces too..

PHP5 Features

[lev606]

An article discussing some of the new PHP5 features.

Re:Apache 2.x safe to use yet?

[shiflett]

You have to use the pre-fork MPM, which is the same condition you'll have when using various modules with mod_perl. Basically, PHP core is thread-safe, but you're likely to use some extensions in your own configuration, and these aren't necessarily thread-safe.

I'm not aware of a list of "who's safe", but such a thing would be nice.

Re:Power Power Power

[loginx]

Whoever said that PHP only uses inline HTML for the presentation layer is a tool.

There are several templating
engines available that effectively separate the application
layer and the presentation layer for PHP applications.
These engines are quite heavily used also (check the source code of most large
open source projects and commercial applications...)

Re:PHP Advocacy: presentation layer=application sp

[aled]

You got to be kidding.
PHP has two primary strengths: architecture and standards.
Java is a general purpose language build from the ground up as an OOP. Java is used from embedded systems, mobile phones, desktops, webapps to world class enterprise projects. Java has a sound definition as a language and its virtual machine. Java standards are defined by the JCP with formal methods for approving changes including Apache.
AFAIK PHP is used only in webapps. OOP was added as an afterthought. PHP is a project of the Apache Software Foundation.
Architecturally has native standard access to databases and there are drivers for every db, supports distributed transactions, has message queues, takes advantages of multiprocessors, JIT native compilers in the VM, libraries for every need. Don't know about PHP but for what I know Java has a more advanced architecture.

The majority of java webspace applications were written before css and xhtml were mainstream.
What apps are you talking about? The PHP changelog shows that PHP 4.0 was released in may 2000. The great mayority Java webapps are based on servlet API 2.2 or later which where release on april 2000. Please explain how Java apps are less suportive of css and xhtml than PHP. BTW, how many PHP 3.x webapps are there?

I predict that there will be a need for css and xhtml conversions among the big java web apps and this will be readily delegated to PHP.
If I would have a Java webapp that needs to support css and xhtml it would be ridiculous to rewrite the app in another language, when it could be easily adapted. How would I explain it to my customer? There's nothing in Java or PHP that prevents using css or xhtml or making them automatically supported.

I don't mean that PHP isn't useful, but Java has just a broader scope.

Re:PHP vs. Perl

[claar]

Well, if you rose from the ranks, then you should be able to perform a simple test:

1. Think of a task that will take about 20 minutes to program
2. Program it in both Perl (use perldoc as another poster suggested) and PHP (use php.net/manual/en)
3. Wait 2 weeks
4. Attempt to add a simple feature to each script. Time yourself and compare
5. ???
6. Profit!

When I go back and look at my Perl scripts I wrote a couple weeks ago, it takes me a while to get my head back into the script. With PHP, the code is always straight forward. It may be more verbose, but I understand it much more quickly than my Perl.

Besides this, I've found PHP's documentation to be far superior to any other languages'. When I do web programming, give me PHP anyday.

The only thing Perl has over PHP in my mind is that CPAN is currently far superior to PEAR. If you need many special libraries, you may want to consider Perl.

</ramble>

Stable my ass!

[krumms]

I reported a showstopper bug two days ago that crashed Apache 2 hard.

It's been fixed now, but I don't see how they can go and say "Oh, it's really really getting there now" after bugs like that have been discovered so recently.

But PHP's development is odd to say the least. In the Betas alone, entire sections of functionality have been rewritten. From scratch. I mean, shit.

Don't get me wrong, PHP is a great language and PHP5 is a step in the right direction but the development of PHP seems, to me at least, so hell for leather.