PHP 5

The long awaited release of PHP 5 is here! This should be an exciting update to the PHP engine as there is better integration for XML and also a slew of updated methods. The following is taken from the front page of php.net:

Some of the key features of PHP 5 include:

  • The Zend Engine II
    with a new object model and dozens of new features.
  • XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now
    focused around the excellent libxml2 library
    (http://www.xmlsoft.org/).
  • A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as
    PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa.
  • A brand new built-in SOAP extension for interoperability with Web Services.
  • A new MySQL extension named MySQLi for developers using MySQL 4.1 and later.
    This new extension includes an object-oriented interface in addition to
    a traditional interface; as well as support for many of MySQL’s new features,
    such as prepared statements.
  • SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite,
    please visit their website.

  • Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access
    low-level socket operations on streams.
  • And lots more…

For changes since Release Candidate 3, please consult the
ChangeLog.

For those of you adventurous enough to try it out, you can download it here. Hmm… now I just need to figure out how to use all the new good stuff in PHP 5. That, and I hope that when/if my host upgrades to PHP 5 that it doesn’t break my site.