PHP 8.4 & 8.5 — Hands-on Workshop May 7, 2026

Welcome! Tonight we're going to play with four of the tastiest new features from PHP 8.4 and 8.5, split across four exercises.

Structure: short intro → you try it → we move on. No prior 8.4/8.5 knowledge required — if you've written a class in PHP, you're ready.

The deal: pair up if you like, break things on purpose, ask weird questions. The person next to you probably has the answer.

🚀 Get your environment ready (pick one)

You need a way to run PHP 8.5. Easiest options first.

⭐ Easiest

1. 3v4l.org (browser, zero install)

Open 3v4l.org, paste your code, hit Eval. It runs against every PHP version at once — scroll to the PHP 8.5.x line to see the output.

Tip: add <?php at the top, otherwise 3v4l assumes HTML.

2. Docker one-liner

One terminal, no install polluting your system:

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD":/app -w /app \
  php:8.5-cli php hero.php

Or an interactive REPL:

docker run --rm -it php:8.5-cli php -a

3. DDEV (if you already use it)

Edit .ddev/config.yaml:

php_version: "8.5"

Then ddev restart and ddev php hero.php.

4. Local install

macOS: brew install php@8.5
Linux (Ubuntu): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php then sudo apt install php8.5-cli
Windows: WSL + the Docker option, or grab the binary from windows.php.net.

Sanity check: run php -v and make sure you see PHP 8.5.x. If you see 8.4, most of exercise 1 will work but exercise 2 and 3 will not.

📋 Exercises

PHP 8.4 Exercise 1

🗡️ Forge Your Hero

Modernise a character sheet class using property hooks and asymmetric visibility.

PHPProperty Hooks PHPAsymmetric Visibility
Start exercise
PHP 8.5 Exercise 2

🥞 The Pancake Builder

Build an immutable pancake order using the pipe operator and clone-with.

PHPPipe Operator |> PHPClone With
Start exercise
PHP 8.4 PHP 8.5
Exercise 3

🎵 Festival Lineup

Query a festival lineup using six brand-new array functions across PHP 8.4 and 8.5.

PHParray_find() PHParray_any() PHParray_all() PHParray_first() PHParray_last()
Start exercise
PHP 8.0+ PHP 8.4
Exercise 4

🏷️ PHP Attributes

Replace docblock annotations with real PHP attributes — and use Reflection to read them at runtime.

PHP#[Attribute] PHP#[SensitiveParameter] PHP#[Override] PHP#[\Deprecated]
Start exercise

📚 Going further

Official release notes

Specific RFCs we used

Playground

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