What was your favorite feature that was introduced in PHP 5.3? [closed]

Answer 1

PHP's DateTime-Classes for Timezone-aware Timestamps. It existed before but was improved greatly in 5.3.

Answer 2

Definitely Phar files

Answer 3

At first I was happy about Lambda in PHP 5.3 but now after several months of developing with 5.3 in in my day to day work, I found that I rarely use Lambda in PHP. Unlike JavaScript where I use closures ALL THE TIME.

The really most useful feature for me in 5.3 is late static binding. Almost every time I have to develop something in 5.2, I really miss it.

And just to make it complete: The worst idea for 5.3 is GOTO. 'Nuff said.

Answer 4

I can't resist: Clearly, adding GOTO is the biggest thing since sliced bread.

Answer 5

Lambda lambda lambda! Definitely adds flexibility that was missing before.

Answer 6

I realize you said "one" and "likes", but sometimes a single answer doesn't cut it to put opinion into perspective. In the wild, you may not see shared hosting services or dev teams use any added features for years to come, so importance is subjective. These are picked from scanning over PHP's 5.3 changelog. I could be wrong about which version these features first appeared in, but...

1. ?: Operator: Shortcut to the shortcut: $a = (($a) ? $a : $somethingelse). If $a is loosely false, just resign it to something else: $a = $a ?: $somethingelse; Now just waiting for $a ?= $somethingelse;. Also, it's like the "OR" operator: if($a ?: $somethingelse), evaluates to true if either $a or $somethingelse are true. Redundant, but there.
2. __callStatic(): Now that specialized Singleton class just reduced to a single universal class probably 5 code lines long.
3. Per directory ini files: PHP's version of .htaccess files. Though I have yet to experiment with what ini values are allowed to be switched where.
4. Additional File functions and DNS lookup support for WIN: at least it would be had WIN obeyed your command to create a `symlink`/shortcut without question since you're the user running the script.
5. array_replace: Whereas $a + $b kept original values, array_replace($a, $b) replaces them.
6. Mail logging: Logging of all mail() calls to check if you're site has been turned into a spam bot. Though I have yet to test this in the wild to see exactly which mail functions are hooked into (exec()? imap?).

Missed Chances:

1. [FIXED] Calling a method with the same name as the parent class calls the constructor: This would've been good to know before. I think it seems like a useful "feature".

Dislikes:

1. Mysqli is still broken.
2. WIN32api has been abandoned
3. DOTNET() never improved and still pretty much just a fancy alias for COM(). Rumors of PHP and WIN cooperating are just rumors.