What's up PHP 5.0

What’s up PHP 5!

PHP 5.0 has 3 major changes. OOP, MySQLi and XML

Object Oriented Model

Highlight of PHP 5 is OOP. The OOP has included in PHP since PHP3, but it
have many limitations and some bugs. But now PHP5 support:
- public, private, protected access modifiers for members and methods
- abstract classed and methods supported
- interfaces classes supported
- final keyword for members and methods supported
- Explicit object cloning supported (use clone keyword or __clone())
- new function for constructor and destructor (__construct() and __destructor())
- constants variable in class supported
- __autoload() will be automatically called when an undeclared class is
  to be instantiated
- Overload method supported.
- static members and methods supported
- Class type hints supported
- Iterators supported (foreach() function)
- new “__METHOD__” constant for show the current class and method
- new “__toString()” method to show the object as string
- new instanceof operator for is-a relationship check (is_a() have been
  deprecated)
- Reflection API supported, this API will help you to reverse-engineer
  classes, methods, interfaces and functions very easy.

CGI and CLI
- PHP 5.0 has 3 modes, but it has changes some file name and improve PHP-Win mode.
- Php.exe is CLI (Command Line Interpreter) Mode, on PHP 4.x version is /cli/php.exe
- php-cgi.exe or CGI Mode, on PHP 4.x this file is rename from /php.exe
- Php-win.exe, last one is new mode which call “PHP-Win” mode. This mode
  is same CLI mode but it doesn't output anything.

New Functions

PHP 5.0 has new many functions improve from PHP 4.3.5 such as Arrays, InterBase,
iconv, Streams, etc… functions). More information, please check PHP Manual

New Directives

PHP 5.0 have new 5 Directives (you can set it on php.ini file)
- mail.force_extra_parameters: Force the addition of the specified parameters
  to sendmail binary. These parameters will replace value of 5th parameter
  in mail() function
- register_long_arrays: This allow or disallow to register the long $HTTP_*_VARS.
  Default value is ON, but for performance reasons if you not using them I
  recommend to turn off.
- session.hash_function: Choose hash function for generate session ID.
  You can change to 0 for MD5 (128 bits) and 1 for SHA-1(160 bits). Default
  value is 0
- session.hash_bits_per_character: This directive define how many bits
  to generate Session ID
- zend.ze1_compatibility_mode: Directive for Zend Engine 1 Compatible
  (PHP 4.2.x)

New Error Report
- E_STRICT this is run-time PHP suggestions to help suggest method of
  coding, example: E_STRICT will warn you if you use deprecated functions.

Another new features
- Exception supported. You can use try/throw/catch structured for exception
  handling
- Static function variables supported.
- Foreach() now supported references sign (&)
- pass by-value and value to by-reference parameters are supported
- All XML extensions (DOM, SAX, XSL, XSLT) are using libxml2 from xmlsoft.org
- SimpleXML, function suited for read well-known XML file format
- SOAP functions have been rewritten as a C extension
- MySQLi (MySQL Improved) extension. This extension allow you access new
  features on MySQL 4.1 or above, such as prepared statements, variable binding,
  SSL and compressed connections, transaction control, replication support
- SQLite embeddable database engine supported.
- Tidy extension. This extension is utility to clean, repair or traverse
  the tree or HTML document.
- Memory Management

Patrickz::just a Developer