The official PHP site has posted an announcement of the release of the latest alpha for the upcoming PHP 7.3.0 release: PHP 7.3.0 alpha 4.

The PHP team is glad to announce the release of the fourth PHP 7.3.0 version, PHP 7.3.0alpha4. The rough outline of the PHP 7.3 release cycle is specified in the PHP Wiki.

This is a development release and should not be used in production. Changes in this alpha release include updates to core functionality, updates to filtering, FPM handling, mbstring and zip archive functionality. You can check out the NEWS file for a complete list of updates.

To download this latest release to try with your codebase, you can download the source from the QA downloads or get the Windows binaries from the Windows QA site. The next planned release of PHP 7.3.0 is the first beta and is set to release on August 2nd, 2018.

On the main PHP.net site they've posted an announcement about the release of the latest alpha version of the next major PHP release: PHP 7.3.0 alpha 3.

The PHP team is glad to announce the release of the third PHP 7.3.0 version, PHP 7.3.0 Alpha 3. The rough outline of the PHP 7.3 release cycle is specified in the PHP Wiki.

[...] Please carefully test this version and report any issues found in the bug reporting system. [...] The next release would be Beta 1, planned for July 19th.

This latest release fixed bugs in a wide range of functionality all across the language including PostgreSQL handling, regular expressions, DOM parsing, the intl extension and OpenSSL. You can find complete details in the changes in the NEWS file for this latest release. As with other pre-stable releases, you can download this latest version for testing from the QA site for source packages or the Windows QA site for the Windows binaries.

The main PHP.net site has posted the announcement about the release of the latest alpha for the PHP 7.3.x series: PHP 7.3.0 Alpha 2.

This is a development release and is not intended to be used in production. Several bugs were fixed including issues with:

• command line output
• a Mysqlnd truncation problem
• Opcache
• date interval handling
• parsing files in the tokenizer

You can see the full list of changes and related bugs in the NEWS file section for the release. As always, this release can either be downloaded from the main downloads page for source packages or windows.php.net for the Windows binaries. The next release, Alpha 3, is scheduled for July 5th which should be followed by the official branching of 7.3 pre-beta.

In a post in the Laravel News site, they quickly cover one of the many changes coming with the next jump in versions of the PHP language (v7.3): trailing commas in function calls.

Well PHP 7.3 won’t have arrow functions (that would be dreamy). However, trailing commas in function calls is an excellent addition coming to PHP 7.3.

In PHP 7.3, trailing commas in function calls will be valid syntax. That is to say, you can use trailing commas when calling functions, but not defining them.

They then include two places where these trailing commas could be useful: in the use of variadic functions and in PHP array definitions. The remainder of the post shows the concept of "trailing commas" in other languages including Javascript, Python, and Haskell. The first alpha release of PHP 7.3 has been released if you'd like to try this out with your own code.

Tomas Votruba has written up a new post to his site sharing an update to a project he has to make it easier to enforce various coding standards in your application's codebase. In this update he talks about the Easy Coding Standard project's v4 alpha that includes a "clean" Symfony standard with support for Yaml and Services.

I wrote about news in Easy Coding Standard 3 a while ago. EasyCodingStandard 4 is not released yet (still in alpha), but soon you'll be able to use all the news I'll show you today.

And what are they? Neon to Yaml, semi-static to Services, customizable caching, even simpler skipper, short bin and more.

He breaks the new features down into a list of six updates:

• Configure Caching Directory
• Skip Anything, Anywhere
• Short vendor/bin/ecs is the King
• DI Migration Finished: From Neon to Yaml
• From Semi-Static Checkers to Services as First-Class Citizen
• Good Bye Neon Class Autocomplete Or not?

For each there's a brief snippet showing how to configure it a brief description of what it enforces.

The PHP.net site has announce the latest alpha release for the upcoming PHP 7.2.0 release: PHP 7.2.0 Alpha 2:

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.2.0 Alpha 2. This release contains fixes and improvements relative to Alpha 1. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

[...] For information on new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.

As these are just development releases, the downloads for them are on the QA sites: source packages and Windows binaries. The final alpha for PHP 7.2.0 (third) will be published July 6th. Next comes the beta stage then Release Candidates. You can see the full release schedule plan here.

The PHP development group has officially announced the release of the latest alpha in the PHP 7.1.x series: PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 3. This is a preview release and should not be used for production applications.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 3. This release is the last alpha for 7.1.0. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

This release includes new features including an Iterable type, HTTP/2 server push support, creating closures from callables and more precise float values. You can see the full list of additions and changes in the NEWS and UPGRADING files. If you're interested in trying out this latest alpha, you can get the latest source release from here and the Windows binaries here.

The PHP development group has officially released the latest alpha in the PHP 7.1.x series of releases. This is an alpha release and is not intended for production use.

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 2. This is the second alpha release for PHP 7.1.0. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

[...] For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.

You can get this latest alpha release for testing on your own systems from the QA downloads page (for source) and the Windows QA site for the Windows binaries.

The official PHP.net site has officially posted about the latest (alpha) release in the PHP 7.x series: PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 1:

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 1. This release marks the beginning of the first minor release in the PHP 7.x series. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

This is an alpha release and is not meant to be used in production. Features in this release include nullable types, allow specifying keys in list() usage and class constant visibility modifiers. You can see the full list of changes (and bugs fixed) in the NEWS file. As with all non-stable releases, you can get this latest alpha from this downloads page (for source) or the windows QA site (for the Windows binaries).

In a previous post to the Laravel News site, the latest offering in the Laravel ecosystem, Spark, was introduced. In this post Matt Stauffer takes a "deep dive" into its features and functionality, digging down into the code to see what makes it tick.

If you've been around on the general Laravel-interested Internet over the last month or two, or if you attended Laracon US or Laracon EU, you've probably already heard of Laravel Spark. If you haven't, check out Taylor's introductory video from Laracon EU.

I've held off on writing about it until now, because it has changed a lot over the span of its development. It's released as an Alpha now, so the API has solidified some... but it'll still change quite a bit between now and the release. [...] This is, instead, a deep-dive into how it works and what it does. I'll be writing a more general introduction to Spark once it's actually released, so beware: this is a bit of a deeper dive, for people geeky enough to want to look at an alpha release.

He starts with a recap and a high-level overview of the system, what it's designed to do and how to get it installed (either in a fresh install or an existing application). He then starts breaking down the pieces that make up the system:

• changes made to files in your current application
• details on the contents of the SparkServiceProvider
• the addition of an app.js defining the VueJs bootstrap for the interface

He then starts looking at the interface, showing how to register a new user (with two-factor auth), work with the "teams" functionality to group users and create payment and plan options for your products.