Discovering method signature changes

Several method signature changes have been introduced in PHP 8. Understanding these signature changes is important if your code extends any of the classes or implements any of the methods described in this section. As long as you are aware of these changes, your code will function correctly, resulting in fewer bugs.

The signature changes that were introduced in PHP 8 reflect the updated best practices. Accordingly, if you write code that uses the correct method signatures, you are following these best practices. We will begin our discussion by reviewing PHP 8 changes to magic method signatures.

Managing magic method signatures

In PHP 8, the definition and use of magic methods has taken a significant step toward standardization. This was accomplished by introducing precise magic method signatures in the form of strict argument and return data types. As with most of the improvements seen in PHP 8, this update was included to prevent the misuse...