Upgrading to PHP 7.4

The awaited latest version of the PHP 7.4 was released on 28th Nov, 2019. It comes with a lot of new features such as

• Typed Properties
• Arrow Functions
• Limited Return Type Covariance and Argument Type Contravariance
• Unpacking Inside Arrays
• Numeric Literal Separator
• Weak References
• Allow Exceptions from __toString()
• Opcache Preloading
• Several Deprecations
• Extensions Removed from the Core

PHP 7.1 approaches EOL & 7.2 will become security only on 1st December.

Let's see how to upgrade your PHP installation to 7.4.

1. Add the ondrej/php PPA

Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php # Press enter to confirm.
sudo apt-get update

Debian:

sudo apt install apt-transport-https lsb-release
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg # Download the signing key
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list' # Add Ondrej's repo to sources list.
sudo apt update

2. Install PHP 7.4 and required extensions

To install PHP 7.4 core

sudo apt install php7.4 php7.4-common php7.4-cli

Install required extensions

Simply prefix php7.4- with an extension that you need to install.
For example to get the php-curl extension use php7.4-curl

sudo apt install php7.4-curl php7.4-json php7.4-gd php7.4-mbstring php7.4-intl php7.4-bcmath php7.4-bz2 php7.4-readline php7.4-zip

3. PHP 7.4 for web:

To integrate PHP with your web server, If you are using Nginx, or Apache with mod_event, you will need to install php7.4-fpm package. If you are using PHP as an embedded Apache module, you will need the package libapache2-mod-php7.4. For Apache, you can use apachectl -V to see your current MPM, whether it’s prefork or event.

Nginx or Apache with event MPM:

sudo apt install php7.4-fpm

Apache with prefork MPM:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php7.4
sudo a2enmod php7.4

4. Uninstall old PHP versions:

sudo apt purge php7.3 libapache2-mod-php7.3 # For removing PHP 7.3
sudo apt purge php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 # For removing PHP 7.2
sudo apt purge php7.1 libapache2-mod-php7.1 # For removing PHP 7.1
sudo apt purge php7.0 libapache2-mod-php7.0 # For removing PHP 7.0

5. Verify PHP 7.4 installation:

To verify the installation of PHP 7.4

From CLI:

php -v

From web server:

Create a file info.php. It must be saved to a very specific directory, which is called the “web root”. In Ubuntu and Debian this is located at /var/www/html/.

sudo nano /var/www/html/info.php

Type the following in the editor.

<?php
    phpinfo();
?>

When you are finished, save and close the file.

Now visit this script in your browser. http://your_server_IP_address/info.php
You should see something similar to this.

So now you have PHP 7.4 up and running. See the migration guide for PHP 7.4 at https://www.php.net/migration74

Comments

[Dāvis Naglis]

Good job.
Switched to PHP 7.4 yesterday. Ended up having a "MySQL server gone away" error when working with Laravel. Weirdly enough, the fix was to change MySQL authentication method to caching_sha2_password.

[Pushkar Anand]

MySQL 8.X uses caching_sha2_password as the default authentication mechanism.

[Dāvis Naglis]

I still had it on auth_socket as authentication mechanism (after I reinstalled MySQL).

[Peter Nyiri]

Hi,
I am not an expert and having trouble updating to PHP 7.4 from 7.2.
I have a VPS, Apache-NGINX-Varnish, CentOS 7.7 and CWP Pro.
I did the steps to install:

sudo yum -y install dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel...

sudo yum -y install rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-...

yum --enablerepo=remi-php74 install php

yum --enablerepo=remi-php74 install php-xml php-soap php-xmlrpc php-mbstring php-json php-gd php-mcrypt

sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php74

At this point php 7.4 seems to be installed, however php -v still returns 7.2 and CWP also shows the old version.

What else do I need to do to with Apache/NGINX?

Server version: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS)
Server MPM: prefork

I tried this:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php7.4

sudo: apt: command not found

Thanks.

[Pushkar Anand]

Try sudo dnf -y install dnf-utils and sudo dnf module install php:remi-7.4

[Peter Nyiri]

I use yum, not dnf.

I already ran this:
sudo yum -y install yum-utils

Package yum-utils-1.1.31-52.el7.noarch already installed and latest version
Nothing to do

Also I just remembered that my server is running on php-cgi, not php-fpm

[Pushkar Anand]

I have no experience with CGI.

[Marielle]

Hello, Petter. I have the same trouble with updating PHP on CWP. Can you possibly write me if you finded the solution?

[Hung Nguyen Manh]

hahahaha it's like TypeScript systax

[Dmitri Don]

php7.4-fpmpackage -> php7.4-fpm package

also, would be cool if you would publish how all these new features would change our code!

[Pushkar Anand]

Thanks for finding the typo. I plan on writing about it shortly.

[Adam Whitlock]

Php is looking a bit more like typescript with all the typing and arrow functions! Thanks for writing

[Jeremy Morgan]

Very cool stuff. I haven't coded anything real in PHP in about a decade but I'm thinking about putting something together just for fun. Thanks for the article!

[Pushkar Anand]

Do post about what you build.

[Konstantin]

Thank you for the article. There is a tiny mistake here (php7.3):

sudo apt install php7.4-curl php7.4-json php7.4-gd php7.4-mbstring php7.4-intl php7.4-bcmath php7.4-bz2 php7.3-readline php7.3-zip

[Pushkar Anand]

Thanks for letting me know. I'll update.

[Injection Moulding]

Hi pushkar, can you tell me how can I install ziparchive on php 7.4? i am running virtuamin on centos 7.

[Pushkar Anand]

I am not that familiar with virtuamin, but I think it should be same as installing any other packages. Try installing as you usually do. The ziparchive is available in php-zip.

[Natan Felles]

How do you installed xdebug?

[Pushkar Anand]

I used the pear package to install Xdebug.