2021-08-24 - PHP 8.0 named arguments

Context

At one point the old RFC for named arguments got an update, has been approved and implemented. With the implementation of this feature a language aspect changes how public API is perceived. When using PHP >=8.0 function arguments are not just positional but also associative and keyed by their name depending on the callers function calling behaviour.

Decision

We do not support this feature and claim the argument names as private API. This includes to wrap calls for func_get_arguments in an array_values or similar approaches to remove names from parameters. This feature can be replicated to a certain degree with parameter classes the only contain the data for a method call in a single object, and therefore is not a language feature we depend on. We already use this occasionally with a trend towards this. This allows setting parameters by name via using their respective setter. It also has the same developer experience across PHP versions.

Consequences

Pros

• Contributors to HEPTAconnect packages have one breaking change complexity layer less to work on
• Contributors to HEPTAconnect packages can apply the same backward compatibility promises across all supported PHP versions (which includes versions prior to this feature)
• Contributors to HEPTAconnect packages are allowed to rename parameters

Cons

• Users of HEPTAconnect packages can make use of this feature, but they should implement a test that targets this feature to ensure functionality using HEPTAconnect defined private API.
• HEPTAconnect can be evaluated as non-fully PHP 8 compatible