![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.canspace.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/canspace-php-7.3-is-here-36.png\")
<\/p>\nIt takes a special kind of nerd to get excited when a new update to PHP rolls out.<\/p>\n
The important thing to note? All CanSpace servers now support PHP 7.3, which means that if you\u2019re running a website platform that requires it and is up-to-date, everything should be perfectly compatible.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s PHP, you may ask? It\u2019s a general-purpose scripting language that can very easily be embedded into HTML, and therefore is one of the main languages used in web development. If your website runs on WordPress, for example, the main scripting language it runs on is PHP.<\/p>\n
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PHP is what is known as a \u201cserver-side\u201d scripting language. That means that the user\u2019s computer doesn\u2019t have to process any PHP \u2014 instead, when the user\u2019s browser visits a particular website, that site\u2019s server processes the PHP and generates HTML as an output that is sent back to the requesting browser.<\/p>\n
Simply put, if you\u2019re using CanSpace as your host, your servers will be running the latest PHP version which should, in turn, lead to the smoothest possible integration with many different website platforms.<\/p>\n
PHP 7.3 was officially launched in December 2018. Here\u2019s what you need to know about updates in PHP 7.3:<\/p>\n
These powerful syntaxes are often underutilized by programmers because of their rigidity and also poor readability when looking back over the code. PHP took note of this, and have added more flexibility: the closing marker to be indented there is no longer the requirement for a new line after the closing marker.<\/p>\n
While trailing commas were allowed in PHP 7.2 in grouped namespaces, PHP 7.3 enables developers to add trailing commas in function declarations.<\/p>\n
PHP can now throw up a same site cookie flag, which monitors what domain cookies are sent from. This reduces the risk of the risk of CSRF and information leakage attacks. There are two designations: cookies marked samesite=Lax will not be passed for any cross-domain requests unless it’s a regular link that navigates the user to the target site; cookies marked samesite=Strict will not be sent for any cross-domain requests.<\/p>\n
As you probably know by now, speed is everything when it comes to website performance. PHP has taken note of this, and provided more of the performance its users crave. Tests have shown PHP 7.3 to be 31% faster than PHP 7.0, and almost 10% faster than PHP 7.2, which should have a tangible impact for all users.<\/p>\n