So Long, Farewell PHP 4
Our next ExpressionEngine release will mark the end of PHP 4 support in ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter. For most of you, this should be a non-issue. PHP 4 was originally released in May of 2000 and reached End of Life in December of 2007. If you think about it, PHP 4 is to us what Internet Explorer 6 is to you.
We will be requiring PHP 5.1.6. The easiest way to see if your current host meets the requirements is to download and test using the Server Wizard. If your host does not meet the minimum requirements, open a support ticket and work with them to upgrade your account to PHP 5. In the majority of cases, this should be trivial.
If you are a third-party developer there are a few things you need to be aware of:
1. All constructors have been renamed to __construct. If your code extends one of our classes and includes a call to the parent constructor, you will need to change that call.
2. PHP 5.1.6 does not include support for native JSON functions. To remain compatible with all ExpressionEngine add-ons please make sure you continue to use:
$this->EE->javascript->generate_json();
// and in reverse
if ( ! function_exists('json_decode'))
{
$this->EE->load->library('Services_Json');
}
json_decode($json);
Keep an eye on the developers docs as we have some cool stuff in store.
Let’s all do a happy dance and say goodbye to our little friend.
