PHP7, To Code It Better

PHP7 came with many new features and changes. However, none of them were specifically for REST or web services. In fact, REST does not have any direct relation with language constructs. This is because REST is an architecture, while a language is there to provide constructs for implementation. So, does that mean PHP7 has some construct or feature which can make this implementation better? Yes and no. It depends on what we mean by implementation.

If we mean just getting a request and returning a response then No, there is no such specific feature. But, any RESTful Web Service is related to an entity, and an entity can have its own logic. So to provide RESTful Web Service for that entity, we need to write that logic as well. For this purpose, we will need to write more PHP code than just getting a request and returning a response. So to keep the code simple and clean, yes, PHP7 offers us many things.

I assume that you have the basic knowledge of PHP, as knowing PHP basics is a prerequisite of this book. So, we will not be looking at PHP5. In this chapter, we will be looking at many of the PHP7 features and changes, are either very important to know or we will be using in our code. We are directly going into these features. We are not going in to the details of installing or upgrading to PHP7 because there are dozens of tutorials available for that on the internet. Here is a list of features and changes we are going to discuss:

• Scalar type declaration
• Return type declaration
• Null coalescing operator
• Spaceship operator
• Group use statement
• Generator-related new features
  • Generator return expression
  • Generator delegation
• Anonymous classes
• Closure::call() function
• Errors and exceptions
• PHP7.1 features
  • Nullable types
  • Symmetric array destructuring
  • Support for keys in list()
  • Multi-catch exception handling