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We converted several old PHP-5.x apps to be 7.x-ready about a year or more ago. The apps had various authors and various levels of maintenance over the years. (

We converted several old PHP-5.x apps to be 7.x-ready about a year or more ago. The apps had various authors and various levels of maintenance over the years. (By and large they were internally used apps at a large institution which is why one app could be very different from another app.) If you have been dreading a transition, don't sweat it. From our experience, it was easier than a developer might think when they first open that old PHP codebase. Oh, and the speed increases the benchmarks promised are real. Even the bad apps saw a noticeable speed increase.

jrumbut 8y ago
I will second that it isn't very painful at all. Longevity is one of the strengths of PHP, it is not hard to find continuously operational PHP codebases that are 15 or more years old. Those codebases are often hideous but they've been getting stuff done, and that's admirable. Generally when updating a codebase like that, it's important to also make sure that passwords are being stored securely, SQL queries are using prepared statements, and XSS/CSRF protections are in place, and a protocol is set up for keeping up with new PHP versions. Then hopefully it will be ready to go back to minimum maintenance mode for some more years.
oliwarner 8y ago
That's great if you're maintaining your work. I think a somewhat broader problem here is the number of unmaintained PHP webapps/sites, commissioned by small business on short contract jobs and then never touched again. I'm familiar with this phenomenon because a decade ago, I used PHP for contract work. Some of my work from this time is still running, seemingly unaltered. I've gone back to clients over the years but they treat me like I'm trying to shake them down. Even if you make it clear you don't want to do the work, it rarely has a good outcome. Of the dozen or so clients who were still running my output 10Y+ after the fact, one took it offline, the rest blanked me. Now consider how many PHP contractors exist out there doing scrot jobs for SMBs? How many of these crappy little sites exist? Millions? Hundreds of millions? Do you think it more likely they're going to spring for upgrading/replacing all this? Or that 5.x is going to stay exactly where it is, indefinitely? They're not going to "sweat it"; they only care about financial outlay.

jrumbut 8y ago

I will second that it isn't very painful at all. Longevity is one of the strengths of PHP, it is not hard to find continuously operational PHP codebases that are 15 or more years old. Those codebases are often hideous but they've been getting stuff done, and that's admirable. Generally when updating a codebase like that, it's important to also make sure that passwords are being stored securely, SQL queries are using prepared statements, and XSS/CSRF protections are in place, and a protocol is set up for keeping up with new PHP versions. Then hopefully it will be ready to go back to minimum maintenance mode for some more years.

oliwarner 8y ago

That's great if you're maintaining your work. I think a somewhat broader problem here is the number of unmaintained PHP webapps/sites, commissioned by small business on short contract jobs and then never touched again. I'm familiar with this phenomenon because a decade ago, I used PHP for contract work. Some of my work from this time is still running, seemingly unaltered. I've gone back to clients over the years but they treat me like I'm trying to shake them down. Even if you make it clear you don't want to do the work, it rarely has a good outcome. Of the dozen or so clients who were still running my output 10Y+ after the fact, one took it offline, the rest blanked me. Now consider how many PHP contractors exist out there doing scrot jobs for SMBs? How many of these crappy little sites exist? Millions? Hundreds of millions? Do you think it more likely they're going to spring for upgrading/replacing all this? Or that 5.x is going to stay exactly where it is, indefinitely? They're not going to "sweat it"; they only care about financial outlay.