PHP 8.1 is Two Weeks Away, Here's What to Expect

The PHP team announced the final PHP 8.1 release candidate (RC6) yesterday, with the GA release two weeks away!

🎉 PHP 8.1 Release Candidate 6 is ready!

🔚 It's the last Release Candidate!

➕ Do: Test your projects! NOW!

➖ Don't: Run it in production.

⏭️ 8.1.0 in two weeks!

🔗 https://t.co/PKXtVnLEdU

📸 by derickr pic.twitter.com/nsdBl6HXs7

— php.net (@official_php) November 11, 2021

The PHP 8.1 GA release happens in two weeks on Thursday, November 25th. The timetable has more details on the release schedule of PHP 8.1. Users are encouraged to test projects with PHP 8.1 but don't run this version in production quite yet.

An excellent way to start testing is to leverage PHP 8.1 Support in Laravel Sail. Recently, Laravel 8.69 introduced an Enum validation rule as well as enum model casts, which require PHP 8.1:

validator(
    ['status' => 'pending'],
    ['status' => [new Enum(ServerStatus::class)]]
)->validate();

PHP 8.1 is a minor release with new features focusing on the language's object-oriented design, types, functions, etc. Here are some of the highlight features coming to PHP 8.1:

• Enums
• Fibers
• Performance
• Final Class Constants
• PHP array_is_list()
• fsync function

Learn More

The following list of resources has everything you need to learn more about the upcoming releases:

• The UPGRADING document includes backward-incompatible changes, new features, and everything else you'll need to familiarize yourself with changes in PHP 8.1
• The NEWS document has detailed notes about each release
• The PHP 8.1 preparation tasks page has the release timeline of the upcoming releases
• You can download the PHP 8.1.1RC6 source from the downloads page