Do you use PHP4 or PHP5?

[eskimoen]

I posted the same little survey on another board. It would be great to know what the GFY users prefer, so please spare two mins of your time and help me and other php developers.

Do you use PHP4 or PHP5?

How to check your server:

1. Create a new file called phpinfo.php
2. Open the file and copy the follwing into it:
   <?php phpinfo(); ?>
3. Upload the file to your webserver
4. Goto http://www.yourdomain.com/phpinfo.php
5. You will see the PHP version at the top
6. Submit your PHP version in this poll
7. Delete phpinfo.php from your server

Note: If your PHP is older than 4.3.7 it is definitely time to upgrade. Contact your host.

Info: Currently newest versions are 5.0.4 and 4.3.11.

Thanks for your help.

[mortenb]

php4.. php5 is still not stable enough for important stuff.. give it 3-6 months..

[pstation]

i use both

[College Downtime]

im working on making everything 5

[beta-tester]

I use PHP Version 4.3.9

[Varius]

The latest stable version in the 4 tree for production. 5 for some demo servers.

[eskimoen]

Originally Posted by mortenb

php4.. php5 is still not stable enough for important stuff.. give it 3-6 months..

PHP5 is not stable??? PHP 5.0.4 is definitely stable. The first release candidates of PHP5 was released more than a year ago. The first stable version of PHP5 was released 13 July 2004. See http://php.net/releases.php

I personally use PHP5 because of the improved mysql client api, MySQLi, but mostly because of the new object model. OOP in PHP5 is pretty cool.


Btw, thanks for your votes guys.

[Trafficbrokercom]

Originally Posted by eskimoen

I personally use PHP5 because of the improved mysql client api, MySQLi, but mostly because of the new object model. OOP in PHP5 is pretty cool.

exactly

[Serge Litehead]

PHP5, moved to it about half a year ago and never looked back

[Serge Litehead]

I'm also liking Apache2

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by eskimoen

PHP5 is not stable??? PHP 5.0.4 is definitely stable. The first release candidates of PHP5 was released more than a year ago. The first stable version of PHP5 was released 13 July 2004. See http://php.net/releases.php

I personally use PHP5 because of the improved mysql client api, MySQLi, but mostly because of the new object model. OOP in PHP5 is pretty cool.


Btw, thanks for your votes guys.

PHP5 is not stable, it is way too new to be stable. You might have just not stumbled over the bugs yet ;)

Functionality of some functions changed in certain cases and other things.

Also, there is no reason to go on PHP5. The only major change is the new OOP model and OOP in scripting languages is... well... unneeded overhead.

Just my 2 cents..

[eskimoen]

Originally Posted by Nathan

PHP5 is not stable, it is way too new to be stable. You might have just not stumbled over the bugs yet ;)

Functionality of some functions changed in certain cases and other things.

Also, there is no reason to go on PHP5. The only major change is the new OOP model and OOP in scripting languages is... well... unneeded overhead.

Just my 2 cents..

No I havent stumbled across any PHP5 bugs. I believe that PHP5 is very stable. It contains bugs as any other software. Many bugs reports on PHP5 is on new and experimental features.

There are very few incompatibilities between PHP5 and PHP4. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/migrati...compatible.php

What functions have changed functionality? I havent come across anyone.

[CGI]

The OOP stuff has changed enough to be a pain in the ass in terms of migrating forward from 4 to 5.

Personally I make sure everything new which I write works on 4 and 5 and try to fix the old stuff as I come across it, however, I still have 4 on my production servers (although the last time I've really had any compatibility problems with 5 was when it was very early in the dot releases).

- CGI

[mrthumbs]

ill probably be using php4 for the upcoming 3-5 years. No joke.

[fr8]

still on php4 but i make sure i code with php5 in mind.

[MikeXAMO]

PHP 5, I've been using it for at least 4 months now and I havent had a single issue... works great!

[etech]

Its very nice that PHP became much more Object Oriented, but it's still very buggy

[INDK]

Originally Posted by Nathan

PHP5 is not stable, it is way too new to be stable. You might have just not stumbled over the bugs yet ;)

Functionality of some functions changed in certain cases and other things.

Also, there is no reason to go on PHP5. The only major change is the new OOP model and OOP in scripting languages is... well... unneeded overhead.

Just my 2 cents..

First, PHP5 is not "new". Early versions of the Zend2 Engine were available in CVS a very long time ago and were fairly popular to the PHP developer community even before any release of PHP5 was made. If your installation of PHP5 is unstable, I recommend you report it to the Zend Mailing Lists because I think they would be very surprised to learn that PHP5 is unstable.

Second, as far as "Functionality of some functions changed" goes, as someone already pointed out all the compatibility issues are listed here. Now tell me how much of that have you actually used?

"The only major change is the OOP model". RTF ChangeLog.



The natural progression of languages has been something like this: Statement-based languages (ASM, etc.) -> Procedural Languages (Pascal, etc.) -> Object-Oriented Languages (Java, etc.). PHP4 is a procedural language with a very half-assed set of OOP features. PHP5 is an attempt to add some real OOP features to the language (protected methods and member data, interfaces, abstract classes, ...). These are things that true OOP languages actually have.

The real question isn't even really about PHP4 or PHP5, it's about your preference for object-oriented programming. If you want to switch to PHP5, research OOP first (or while you make the transition). This area of software engineering has been so heavily researched that you should be able to be able to find an endless amount of documents that discuss OOP programming in general (there isn't much documentation related to PHP5 itself on OOP, but even reading articles that cover OOP with C++ or Java examples can still be very good at demonstrating the key points).

If you plan on using PHP5 because it's the latest, and not because you want to make use of the new OOP features, then just stick with PHP4 until you understand, and ultimately prefer -- like all the best programmers do -- object-oriented programming.

[fris]

fris# php -v
PHP 4.3.11 (cli) (built: May 20 2005 05:30:13)

[Sams_gfy]

php4

[eskimoen]

Originally Posted by etech

Its very nice that PHP became much more Object Oriented, but it's still very buggy

Have you experienced bugs when using OOP in PHP5? Which classes? The new PDO? I have not come across a bug yet..

Originally Posted by mrthumbs

ill probably be using php4 for the upcoming 3-5 years. No joke.

Why do you say that? I bet PHP4 will not be fully maintained in a year. Im actually not sure if its already the case. PHP5 will take over, so bug fixes and security patch for PHP5 and Zend Engine 2 will be first priority.


Nice post INDK. Thanks for your support

If you want to read more on PHP5 take a look at http://www.devx.com/webdev/Article/10007/ .

See http://php.net/manual/en/faq.migration5.php for a FAQ when migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5.

[Intrigue]

I Personally Prefer php 5 for anything of my own, however the large number of people that are misinformed about 5 and are clinging to 4 because 5 is 'new and too buggy' or 'the only better thing in 5 is OOP stuff' etc... are causing me to code everything for anyone else in 4, i can't wait until people get their heads outta their asses and 5 is the standard install tho

[boner 2.0]

Apache 1.3.33 and PHP 4.3.11 here

[eskimoen]

Thanks for votes. Keep them coming

[TheSwed]

4.3.11 here