In terms of technology, one has to stay always up-to-date in all terms because, what we think is the latest today, can become a thing of past the next day. That’s rapidly is how the IT world is changing.
You may think that what is the need for updates when what you have is working fine? This thought usually arises for website owners. You might be having a website running on PHP 5 all fantastic and the PHP geniuses released their latest version – PHP 7. Your web application development company will advise you to upgrade your website to PHP 7, of course, your response will be, “what is the need of that?” Right? Well, you must and today we will show you why.
About 48,454,514 live websites are using PHP and among them, 6,406,147 are running on PHP 7 today. Every update means something better is in there. There is nothing wrong with PHP 5 but, if you can get exceptional features and modernity in your existing website with PHP 7, why not do it? So let’s see, what makes PHP 7 different from PHP 5?
Advantages of Choosing PHP 7 over PHP 5
Improved Performance
PHP 7 is often termed PHPNG (PHP – NextGen), due to its brand new model of engine and its improved performance level of coding. Need proof? Run a code on both PHP 5 and PHP 7 simultaneously and see for yourself who wins the race. Compared to PHP 5.6, PHP 7 needs very few servers to serve the same number of users as before, which makes it cost-effective and environment-friendly as there won’t be any need of running extra power servers for PHP 7 applications. It’s optimized memory usage, doubles its performance level and makes scripting in it smooth and flawless.
Speed & Site Improvement
According to the recent survey, 40% of users close the tab if websites take more than 3 seconds to load, which is extremely a short period of time. But, websites running on PHP 7 will have nothing to worry about it as its speed is said to be as twice as PHP 5. Businesses today are giving preference to PHP 7 more due to its fast loading capability and load-bearing capacity.
Define And Declare The Return Type
One of the biggest blocks in PHP 5 was that the PHP Web Developers were unable to define and declare the return type of a function or method. This made them inefficient in preventing the unwanted return types and generating exceptions in otherwise case. Thankfully, PHP 7comes with a solution to it. It allows the programmers to declare the return type of the functions as per the expected return value, by default. It makes the code simpler, much easier and understandable.
Spaceship – The New Operator
Also known as Combined Comparison Operators, comes with the notation <=> and carries out the job of sorting and combined comparison of two expressions in a well-aligned code. It the star feature of PHP 7 which developers can take advantage of in perfecting their code. Its functionality is almost similar to strcmp() and is also said to be a replacement for the library function version_compare() but the addition of this feature in PHP 7 is only benefitting PHP web development a lot.
Anonymous Class & Asynchronous Support
Already present in other popular object-oriented languages like Java and C#, one of the much-needed feature ‘Anonymous Class,’ that was missing in PHP 5, has been now covered in PHP 7 which has speeded up the execution time. Moreover, with PHP 7 you can now run multiple activities at the same time without any interruption. You can access the database, network, set timers and also perform several I/O operations simultaneously.
Error-handling and Syntax Changes
If you know error and exception, you might be aware that they were not up-to-the-mark in PHP 5. While PHP 7 with its new Engine Exception objects has got major errors replaced with exceptions that can be handled without any trouble.
Apart from that, PHP 7 has also got some good syntax updates that are making it a top choice today in business. like the syntax for variable dereferencing has been changed compared to PHP 5 which makes coding more consistent in PHP 7. Unlike in PHP 5, it prevents the code from running in an uncertain direction whenever a bug arises. Also, the symbol for defining comments in INI files have been changed from “#” to “;”
In a Nutshell
Today, businesses are aiming for a high customer retention rate which can be gained with improved functionality and exceptional website performance and PHP 7 works like a pro in both web and mobile, which can help businesses manage traffic and maintain their day to day activities on their site, seamlessly. Its reduced memory usage, faster performance and execution engine improvements, all make it tempting for any website to upgrade to PHP 7, which you must sooner or later.
Upgrading to PHP 7 is easy but you will need a PHP Application Development Company who can take care of the challenges and provide you tested and well-integrated codes for your application. Migrate your website from PHP 5 to PHP 7 now by Hiring India’s Best Dedicated PHP Developers from Kanhasoft.
