What’s New in PhpStorm 2021.3

One of the most highly anticipated features of PHP 8.1 is enums.

Support for enums was introduced in PhpStorm 2021.2, offering code suggestions and validation to protect you from using them incorrectly.

An enum in PHP contains a set of cases, can have methods, and can be used as a type hint. In all of these cases, PhpStorm provides error highlighting and proper suggestions to save you time.

Readonly properties are the properties that cannot be changed after initialization, that is, after a value is assigned to them.

PhpStorm 2021.3 will help you make use of readonly properties in your code and make sure they are used correctly.

A dedicated inspection will check that a readonly property is initialized only in the same scope where it’s declared, either the property declaration itself or in a class method.

Since readonly properties must always be typed, PhpStorm will check if the type declaration is specified.

A readonly property cannot have a default value, but you can initialize it in the constructor as a promoted property, so PhpStorm provides a quick-fix for this.

In PHP 8.1, you can use new expressions when initializing default parameters’ values, static variables, global constants, and attribute arguments.

PhpStorm will verify such usages and highlight invalid cases such as providing a new object as a class constant or property.

PHP 8.1 lets you get a reference to any function by means of the first-class callable syntax. Now, instead of writing $fn = Closure::fromCallable('strlen');, you can use a shorter $fn = strlen(...); form, and PhpStorm will provide you with an Alt+Enter quick-fix to convert your code to the new syntax.

PHP 8.1 brings intersection types, whose value must satisfy multiple type constraints instead of just a single one.

PhpStorm will now provide code completion for these constructs and check that an intersection type is not combined with a union type. And if you have an intersection type specified as a PHPDoc annotation, PhpStorm will interpret it correctly, too.

PHP 8.1 introduces a never type for return values. If a function is declared with the never type, then it will not return a value and will either throw an exception or end the script’s execution (just like the die(), exit(), or trigger_error() functions do).

In PHP 8.1 you can declare final class constants so that they cannot be overridden in child classes, and PhpStorm will verify such cases.

PhpStorm brings support for the IteratorAggregate interface and iterating over Doctrine Collections now works out of the box.

In the upcoming Laravel release, the illuminate/collections package will support generics annotations. PhpStorm 2021.3 provides better code completion for such collections.

If there is a generic @template parameter in a constructor and you want to specify the type by passing an object as an argument, PhpStorm will now infer the correct type and provide code completion.

Earlier, to move a class and update its namespace, your only option was to use the move refactoring (F6) in the code editor. In PhpStorm 2021.3, you can use drag and drop in the Project view instead. This way, the project structure would be visible during operation. And what's more, you can move several classes or entire folders using this technique, and PhpStorm will correctly update all the references.

When using an SFTP server for deployment, you can enable rsync for uploading and downloading files and folders, which will significantly increase transfer speeds. The corresponding Use rsync for download/upload option is located in the Advanced section of the deployment server configuration.

The path to the rsync executable can be configured under Settings/Preferences | Tools | Rsync. For macOS and Linux, it should be available right away. For Windows, it is recommended to use Cygwin and OpenSSH.

PhpStorm 2021.3 provides a new status bar widget that shows the current default server. When you need to deal with multiple environments, you can switch between them right from there without going to the settings.

The HTTP client now supports binary responses. If a received response is an image, you will see its preview right in the response console.

The HTTP client can now redirect output to a custom file or directory. It supports two operators for force and soft redirects:

• The >> operator always creates a new file, adding an -n suffix to a file name if such a file already exists.
• The >>! operator rewrites the file if it already exists.

In addition to providing explicit file paths, you can now use new predefined variables: {{$projectRoot}} points to the project root folder and {{$historyFolder}} points to the requests history folder.

In PhpStorm 2021.3, your HTTP requests can be named! You can provide an identifier as a comment with @name as well as text in the requests separator (###).

You can then invoke a request by its name via the Services tool window, from the Run Configuration, Run Anything, or Search Everywhere dialogs.