Modern PHP

PHP generators and yield: memory-efficient data processing in WordPress A generator is a function with yield: instead of building a full array and returning it, it hands out one value at a time and pauses until the caller asks for the next one. For WordPress jobs over large data sets (going through all products, exporting…

PHP Fibers, parallel HTTP requests and background work in WordPress PHP 8.1 added Fibers, and articles promise “concurrency for WordPress” since then. A Fiber is a function that can pause itself and be resumed later; it does not run in parallel with anything. Without an event loop that does non-blocking I/O while fibers wait, they…

PHP 8.4 for WordPress plugin developers PHP 8.4 (November 2024) has two features that change how classes are written, property hooks and asymmetric visibility, a set of small helpers like array_find(), and one deprecation that affects a lot of existing plugin code: implicitly nullable parameter types. A plugin that should run without notices on hosts…

PHP 8.3 for WordPress plugin developers PHP 8.3 (November 2023) is a release of small, practical changes: typed class constants, an #[\Override] attribute, json_validate(), dynamic access to class constants and a few deprecations. In mid-2025 it is the version many hosts recommend, so plugins can start to require it, or at least must run on…

PHP 8.2 in WordPress plugins: readonly classes, DNF types and dynamic properties PHP 8.2 (December 2022) is now the version many hosts offer by default, and it brings one change that produces warnings in old plugin code and three features that make new code cleaner. The warnings come from dynamic properties; the features are readonly…

Upgrade old WordPress plugin code automatically with Rector A plugin written in 2017 for PHP 5.6 still runs, but it is full of array(), missing type declarations, isset( $x ) ? $x : null and string functions that receive null and produce deprecation notices in PHP 8.1. Rector rewrites such code automatically: it parses the…

PHP 8.1 enums, readonly properties and intersection types in a WordPress plugin PHP 8.1 brought three features that make plugin code stricter with little effort. Enums replace groups of string constants, so an invalid status is a type error instead of a silent bug. Readonly properties make value objects that cannot change after construction. Intersection…

Closures and arrow functions in WordPress hooks Anonymous functions are a convenient way to write a short hook callback right where it is added. PHP has had closures since 5.3 and arrow functions (fn() =>) since 7.4. In WordPress they come with two things to know: how variables from the surrounding code get into them,…

PHP 8.0 for WordPress developers: match, named arguments, nullsafe and more PHP 8.0 was released on November 26, 2020. It brings the biggest set of language changes since PHP 7.0: the match expression, named arguments, the nullsafe operator, union types, constructor property promotion, and a JIT compiler. WordPress 5.6, due on December 8, ships with…