Added PHP Type Declarations¶

PHP type declarations (or "type hints") add information about the data types of the function and method arguments. Symfony code didn't have type declarations yet because, according to the Symfony Release Process, we cannot add the latest PHP features right away and we need to wait until certain Symfony versions are released to make those changes.

Symfony 5.0 was the perfect moment to add these type declarations to our entire code base. This was a painstaking process because, even if some work could be automated, each change had to be reviewed manually.

The reason is that it's not only about removing PHPdoc comments and adding the types to the method arguments. You also need to check the rest of the code to look for data type castings. For example:

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-/**
- * @param bool|null $enabled
- */
-public function setStrictRequirements($enabled)
+public function setStrictRequirements(?bool $enabled)
{
-    $this->strictRequirements = null === $enabled ? null : (bool) $enabled;
+    $this->strictRequirements = $enabled;

Check out the Pull Request #32179 to get an idea of the size of this change. Tens of thousands of lines were changed in thousands of files and tens of hours were spent reviewing and merging everything.

Thanks to @jschaedl, @Simperfit, @Tobion, @Matts, @smoench, @vudaltsov, @julien57, @azjezz, @tigitz, @andreia, @thomasbisignani, @lyrixx, @xabbuh for contributing these changes. Special thanks to @derrabus for coordinating the work and to @nicolas-grekas for doing the actual merge and conflict solving.

Added PHP Return Types¶

PHP return types allow functions and methods to specify the data type of their returned values. We considered adding these return types in Symfony 5.0 but we finally didn't do it because of two reasons:

• The burden this would put on the community is immense, because third-party libraries and bundles should also be updated to be compatible with this new Symfony code that includes return types. In other words, Symfony should be the last to add these return types, not the first one.
• Given the complexity and flexibility of Symfony's code base, we'd need return type covariance, which is only available in PHP 7.4 (Symfony 5.x requires PHP 7.2).

In any case, we have a plan to add these return types in Symfony 6.0. Check out the Pull Request #33236 to see the clever trick used to add these return types automatically thanks to the DebugClassLoader. Special thanks to @fancyweb for fixing all current return types defined in PHPdoc comments (see Pull Request #30323).

Added Compatibility with All PHP and PHPUnit Versions¶

The last recent feature that required an insane amount of work but developers take it for granted is the PHPUnit Bridge compatibility with all PHP versions from 5.5 to 7.4 and all PHPUnit versions from 4.8 to 8.0.

As mentioned in the New in Symfony 4.4: PHPUnit Polyfills blog post, we added lots of polyfills to make most of PHPUnit features available regardless of the PHPUnit version used in your application. This is needed for Symfony's own testing but will also help those applications that must keep a broad compatibility with legacy PHP and PHPUnit versions.

Check out the Pull Request #32844 to see the tens of related pull requests that were needed to achieve this. Special thanks to @jderusse who did most of the work related to this feature.

Mailer Integration¶

Contributed by
Fabien Potencier
in #32912.

The new Symfony Mailer was introduced in Symfony 4.3. In Symfony 4.4 we improved and polished it, including the integration with the profiler. The debug toolbar now displays the number of messages sent. If you click on it, you'll see the full message details in the new profiler panel:

Clear Ajax Requests¶

Contributed by
Matts
in #31876.

When making too many Ajax requests or keeping a page open for too long, the debug toolbar gets crowded with a long list of Ajax requests. In Symfony 4.4, you can click on the new Clear link to delete all the existing Ajax requests so you can see the new requests more clearly:

Auto-Select the Best Panel for Ajax Requests¶

Contributed by
Thomas Calvet
in #33783.

When you click on any element of the debug toolbar, you are redirected to its related panel (request, forms, logs, database, etc.) However, for Ajax requests we only display a link to its profile, so you cannot select the first panel displayed.

In Symfony 4.4, we made this link smarter to redirect to the most important panel for each request. For example, if the Ajax request resulted in an exception, you are redirected to the exception panel; if you dumped some information in the Ajax request, you are redirected to the dump panel; etc.

It's a small change, but it will save you some clicks and will improve your developer experience.

Compress Profiler Files¶

Contributed by
Nicolas Grekas
in #33698.

The data collected for each request is stored in an array structure before serializing and storing it the var/cache/ directory of your project. This data is not deleted automatically, so it can grow up pretty quickly.

In Symfony 4.4, if your system allows it, we compress the data automatically before saving it to disk. For a typical profile, the disk space usage decreases from 150 KB to 15 KB (for each profile).

HttpClient Integration¶

Contributed by Timothée Barray and Jérémy Romey in #33015.

The HttpClient component was also introduced in Symfony 4.3. In Symfony 4.4, besides several tweaks and improvements, we've added profiler integration for it. The debug toolbar now displays the number of HTTP requests and if you click on that, you'll see the full details of all requests: