Laravel 5.8 Deprecates String and Array Helpers

February 01, 2019 / Paul Redmond

In Laravel upcoming 5.8’s release, the global string and array helpers are deprecated. The helper functions will be removed in Laravel 5.9. You can see the full list of helper functions deprecated in the merged pull request (PR #26898).

The helpers will still be available in 5.8. However, you should use the \Illuminate\Support\Str and Illuminate\Support\Arr classes directly instead of using the helpers:

// Deprecated
array_add($array, $key, $value);

// Use this directly
Arr::add($array, $key, $value);

If you do prefer to use the helpers, Taylor Otwell suggested in the pull request that these helpers will be packaged up in something like a laravel/helpers package that allows people to pull them into their projects to quickly get them back.

You can see the upcoming Laravel 5.8 upgrade documentation on preferring String and Array classes over helpers:

This impact of this change has been marked as medium since a future, opt-in package would prevent any breaking changes.

I want to caution that it’s still early in the deprecation process and nothing is finalized as far as how Laravel moves forward with an optional package, but it seems clear that Laravel will offer a voluntary helpers package if you want to keep using them.