Feed Sign in with OpenID OpenID

Simon Willison’s Weblog

PHP 5 Release Candidate 1

I haven’t blogged much about PHP in a while because I’ve been up to my nose in mod_python and loving every minute of it. This news is just too important to miss: PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 has been released, bringing the first production-ready release tantilisingly close. While I doubt PHP 5 will tempt me back it’s definitely an exciting upgrade—my biggest complaint with PHP 4 is the brain-dead object model which defaults to copying whole objects rather than passing references, and this is one of the many things addressed by PHP 5. The new libxml2 powered XML features sound really powerful, and SQLite as an on-board database should be ideal for knocking out small stand-alone applications without needing to set up a mySQL database for them.

I may well throw a copy on my Mac over the weekend and try out the changes since version 4.3.

Posted 19th March 2004 at 1:27 am

This is PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 by Simon Willison, posted on 19th March 2004.

Tagged ,

View blog reactions

Next: Internet culture

Previous: SXSW 2004

6 comments

  1. I've been waiting for this for a long time. On an aside, isn't that cool to say? "I may well throw a copy on my Mac over the weekend." A few years ago, this would have sounded absurd. :)

    Chris Vincent - 19th March 2004 02:04 - #

  2. Simon,

    I'd be very interested if you were to document your experiences with and thought on mod_python on your blog, as I am just now really jumping in to it. Are you using an existing application framework on top of it? or did you roll your own? Have you run into any problems using it?

    Bryan Helmkamp - 19th March 2004 08:26 - #

  3. Thanks for the heads up Simon, been hawking PHP.net everyday and Sod's law would have it the day I don't check it (an RC) gets released. Will have to upgrade from PHP4.3.5RC3 to that tonight then. Been following the developement of version 5 for a while and am personally most interested in the SOAP and SimpleXML functions. SQLite sounds interesting too.

    Jonathan Stanley - 19th March 2004 12:54 - #

  4. PHP5 is shaping up to be a great, great thing that should trump ASP.net.

    I'm looking forward to all the new functions that are going to save me so much time...

    Martin Alderson - 20th March 2004 17:02 - #

  5. I am currently somewhat frustrated with PHP5. I see a lot of wonderful new features, including the new and improved object model, exceptions, the XML stuff; but at the same time PHP5 still lacks something as "basic" as namespaces (or packages). So when you build some kind of class library, you're forced to always type out the namespace by including it in your class names -- ie, MyFrameworkDatabaseConnection instead of just DatabaseConnection -- if you want to prevent possible collisions with 3rd party or user code. This IMO is a real pain in the behind, and it's very close to ruining PHP5 for me. :( Now I'm investigating various Python solutions for my new project. I've had a look at WebWare and CherryPy. Both are really interesting, but I don't really need their "core" features (like CherryPy's embedded template code). mod_python is next. I just want to do some pseudo-MVC, publish some classes, use Cheetah for the views (not really the way it's integrated into WebWare). Mmmmmm.

    Hendrik Mans - 22nd March 2004 22:09 - #

  6. Cheetah isn't really integrated into Webware much -- you can use a template as a servlet, but in the end few people do, inside or outside of Webware.

    And it's "Webware", little W. Anal of me, I know, but something about the mixed case just really bugs me with the name Webware.

    Ian Bicking - 29th March 2004 18:54 - #

Comments are closed.

Previously hosted at http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/03/19/PHP5RC1

A django site