ADR-0001: Drop PHP 7 Support, Require PHP 8.0+

Status

Accepted

Context

Prior to v4.0.0, contentful-core.php supported PHP 7.x. PHP 7 reached end-of-life in November 2022, leaving it without security patches. PHP 8.0 introduced union types, named arguments, match expressions, nullsafe operator, and stronger type system guarantees — all of which improve the correctness and expressiveness of SDK contracts. Carrying PHP 7 compatibility required avoiding or shim-wrapping features that could reduce maintenance burden and developer experience.

Additionally, dropping PHP 7 allows phpstan/phpstan to flag previously-undetectable issues and removes conditional code paths in the library.

Decision

With the v4.0.0 release (2022-12-05), the composer.json require.php constraint was updated from ^7.3|^8.0 to ^8.0. PHP 7 is no longer supported or tested. The CI matrix covers PHP 8.0 through 8.4.

Consequences

• Enables: PHP 8 type system features, cleaner attribute usage, access to PHP 8 functions without polyfills.
• Prevents: Running the library on any PHP < 8.0 environment.
• Breaking change: Any consumers on PHP 7.x must upgrade their runtime before adopting v4.x. This is why a major version bump was required.
• Follow-up: Dropping a PHP version in the future (e.g., dropping 8.0 when it reaches EOL) is also a major version bump — this policy is codified in ADR-0004.