PHP 8.4 Release Candidate 1 is here

The PHP team has announced the release of the first PHP 8.4 release candidate! Although the general availability (GA) of v8.4.0 is still about two months away (expected on November 21), you can begin preparing for PHP 8.4 now. Familiarize yourself with the new features, the upgrade path, and key dates to ensure you're ready.

📢 We've collected highlight features coming to PHP 8.4 in our post, A Look at What's Coming to PHP 8.4 📢

#What New Features are in PHP 8.4?

PHP 8.4 is a minor release with some exciting new features like new array find methods, property hooks, and more. Here are some of the highlight features coming to PHP 8.4:

• Add request_parse_body() function that allows parsing RFC1867 (multipart) requests in non-POST HTTP requests.

• Class instantiation without extra parenthesis
• Added the #[\Deprecated] attribute (RFC)
• Property Hooks
• Asymmetric property visibility
• Lazy objects
• Added http_get_last_response_headers() and http_clear_last_response_headers() functions (RFC)
• Added function fpow() following rules of IEEE 754 (RFC)
• New Array Find Functions
• And more...

Check out the upgrading document for the complete list of new features.

#Timeline

PHP 8.4 is out of beta and in the release candidate phase. Most importantly, the GA release is expected on November 21st! We're excited to get our hands on this release and remove all the extra parenthesis around new expressions with constructor arguments 😁

#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 8.4
• The NEWS document has detailed notes about each release
• The PHP 8.4 preparation tasks page has the release timeline of the upcoming releases
• You can download the PHP 8.4 RC1 source from the downloads page