What features and capabilities were added in PHP 8, and which of them do you use in your projects?

PHP 8 introduced many new features and improvements, including:

• Union Types — the ability to specify multiple types for parameters and return values.
• Named Arguments — calling functions with parameter names, which improves readability.
• Attributes (Annotations) — built-in support for metadata through attributes.
• Constructor Property Promotion — concise syntax for declaring and initializing properties in constructors.
• Match Expression — a more powerful and safer alternative to switch with value return.
• Nullsafe Operator (?->) — simplified access to methods and properties of objects that may be null.
• JIT compilation — performance enhancement through Just-In-Time compilation.
• Strict typing for str_contains, str_starts_with, str_ends_with and other new functions.

In my projects, I often use Named Arguments to improve code readability and Constructor Property Promotion to reduce boilerplate code in classes. I also actively use the Match Expression for cleaner logic selection.

Example of using Match Expression:

$result = match($statusCode) {
    200, 201 => 'Success',
    400 => 'Bad Request',
    404 => 'Not Found',
    default => 'Unknown status',
};