The Ultimate Guide to Transpiling PHP Code
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 6:09 am
Ideally, we should be using PHP 8.0 (the latest version at the time of writing) for all of our sites and updating as soon as a new version is released. However, developers will often need to work with older versions of PHP, such as when creating a public plugin for WordPress or working with legacy code that prevents updating the web server environment.
In these situations, we might give up on the hope of using the latest PHP code. But there is a better alternative: we can continue writing our source code with PHP 8.0 and transpile it to an older version of PHP – even PHP 7.1.
In this guide, we will teach you everything you need to know about transpiling PHP code.
What is tranpilation?
Transpilation converts the source code of one programming spain whatsapp number data language into equivalent source code of the same or another programming language.
Transpilation is not a new concept in web development: client-side developers are probably familiar with Babel , a JavaScript code transpiler.
Babel converts JavaScript code from the modern ECMAScript 2015+ version into a legacy version compatible with older browsers. For example, given an ES2015 arrow function:
In these situations, we might give up on the hope of using the latest PHP code. But there is a better alternative: we can continue writing our source code with PHP 8.0 and transpile it to an older version of PHP – even PHP 7.1.
In this guide, we will teach you everything you need to know about transpiling PHP code.
What is tranpilation?
Transpilation converts the source code of one programming spain whatsapp number data language into equivalent source code of the same or another programming language.
Transpilation is not a new concept in web development: client-side developers are probably familiar with Babel , a JavaScript code transpiler.
Babel converts JavaScript code from the modern ECMAScript 2015+ version into a legacy version compatible with older browsers. For example, given an ES2015 arrow function: