PHP 8+ Features & Laravel Concepts

A playground project demonstrating modern PHP features (8.0 to 8.4) and fundamental Laravel architectural concepts.

📋 Requirements

• PHP: >= 8.5 (as per composer.json)
• Composer (for dependencies)

🚀 Features & Examples

PHP 8.0 - 8.3

• Match Expressions: Cleaner alternative to switch statements.
• Named Arguments: Pass arguments by name rather than position.
• Nullsafe Operator: Safe property/method access (?->).
• Constructor Property Promotion: Boilerplate reduction for class properties.
• Union Types: Type declarations accepting multiple types.
• Intersection Types: Type declarations requiring multiple interfaces.
• Enums: Native enumerations.
• Fibers: Low-level concurrency primitives.
• Weak Map: Garbage-collection friendly object maps.
• Attributes: Native metadata for classes/methods.
• Closures: Anonymous functions.

PHP 8.4

• Lazy Initialization: Examples of lazy loading patterns.

Laravel / Architectural Concepts

• Laravel Facade: Simulating Laravel's Facade pattern.
• Dependency Injection: Container and injection basics.
• Routing & Middleware: Simulating Laravel's routing pipeline using closures.
• Interfaces: Contract definitions.
• Magic Methods: PHP's __get, __set, __call, etc.

🛠 Usage

You can run any of the files directly via CLI or serve the directory using a PHP server.

Via CLI

php php_match_expression.php

Via Built-in Server

php -S localhost:8000

Then visit http://localhost:8000 to see the index page.