Strict typing and static analysisPresented at Sunshine PHP, February 2020

PHP 7 introduced type declarations and so brought PHP into the world of strict typing. Each subsequent release in the 7 series has improved this and PHP 7.4 is no different with exciting new type features. In addition, PHP 7 enabled static analysis tools that coupled with type declarations enable us to significantly remove bugs in our code before we even run it! In this talk, I will review PHP’s strict type system, including the new PHP 7.4 features and show how they can make our code safer and clearer and easier to reason about. We will then turn our attention to the available static analysis tools and look at how, with strict typing, we can eliminate whole classes of bugs and make our applications better. By the end of this session, you will be well placed to write better PHP code that has fewer bugs and works as you expect every time.