Experiences of running Magento 1 on PHP 7
How time flies! It’s been almost a year and a half since we released Inchoo_PHP7 extension for Magento 1 (https://github.com/Inchoo/Inchoo_PHP7), and announced that in a blog post (https://inchoo.net/magento/its-alive/).
We were just scratching our own itch – wanting to use all the performance benefits PHP 7 brought to run Magento faster. But, as the cover image of that post inadvertently prophesied, we created a monster that escaped, and is continuing to terrorize the villagers to present day.
So, what happened in the meantime?
- M1 is still going strong. M2 will take over eventually, but, in my humble personal opinion, that’s going be a very slow process.
- On the other hand, PHP 7 is overtaking PHP 5 much quicker than previous versions used to replace their predecessors. (https://seld.be/notes/php-versions-stats-2016-2-edition). This is logical, because it really brings huge performance improvements, and it really is quite compatible, considering the major version number change.
- Magento core became PHP 5.6 compatible in 1.9.3.x. Inchoo_PHP7 became PHP 7.1 compatible.
- But, believe it or not, my humble personal opinion is that it’s better to run Magento on PHP 7.0 than 7.1 (https://github.com/Inchoo/Inchoo_PHP7/wiki/RunningOnPHP7.1).
It’s really difficult to say, but I guess there are hundreds of M1 sites powered by Inchoo_PHP. Just Inchoo alone built from scratch or upgraded double figure of sites to PHP 7. Community seems to be going strong with it too, so I think I can say that it is quite tried and true by now.
- But, believe it or not, my humble personal opinion is that it’s better to run Magento on PHP 7.0 than 7.1 (https://github.com/Inchoo/Inchoo_PHP7/wiki/RunningOnPHP7.1).
- With help from community, we found and fixed a lot of edge cases, and can say quite comfortably that we can make pretty much any M1 site work on PHP 7 without a problem.
- And, in the last release, we even created a testing shell script, which can be very useful to find and fix potential problems.
- Just keep in mind that this still is, and always will be, a developer-level extension. It can be “install and forget” if you are lucky, but, it would be good to have someone knowledgeable to set up, test everything and fix any issues. We had clients who came to us just for this, and we were always able to help them upgrade to PHP 7. And I don’t even want to say you need Inchoo to set it up. There are a number of developers and agencies in the Magento community that can help you out.
What’s ahead?
- Looks like M1 core will continue it’s evolution. Going to Composer install, PHP 7, full page cache on CE, etc. – these are all things that clients are demanding and Magento experts are able to provide. Whether someone likes it or not, the whole ecosystem is large enough to be able to live and evolve on its own, directed by market pressures, and not someone’s will.
- 3rd party extensions are the part of code we can’t fix with our extension. So, whether you are a 3rd party extension creator, a client, an integrator or anywhere else in community, please help spread the awareness that it’s good for everyone to be PHP 7 compatible.
- PHP 7.2 will remove Mcrypt extension, and M1 core is quite dependant on it. There are a few workarounds we already tried out, but it’s not going to be pretty. For the time being, stick to PHP 7.0, and you won’t have problems.
- Personally, I can’t wait for the moment when I’ll be able to use PHP 7 features when programming Magento, not just it’s performance. Stronger typing, for one, should bring less bugs and a more secure system. But that is still in far future from now, unfortunately.
TL;DR;
M1 runs (much) faster on PHP 7. Quite easy to set up due to a 3rd party module Inchoo_PHP7. MIT license. Great community support.
See you around!
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6 comments
Hi, thanks for great plugin, it worked well on my Magento CE 1.9.3.7 , interestingly I just found that Magento prepared compatibility patches for PHP 7.2 for 1.9.2.0 version and above and from 1.9.3.9 Magento doesn’t need any patches as it’s PHP 7.2 Ready Cool huh 🙂
Hi Marcin,
Yes, you are right. Interesting fact is that it was our contribution to Magento and good part of it is based on that extension.
Check here for more: https://inchoo.net/magento/magento-1-official-php-7-2-patches/
hi there inchoo team,
first off, thanks for your php7 compatibility extension, great work! couple of question: have u had any experience with problems using the PEAR and phpseclib libraries included in M1? i noticed your module doesnt update these libs, so won’t the old php4 constructors in those old versions cause problems for magento core functions using them? have u had any experience updating these libraries? any idea whether this is safely doable up to some specific version? in magento 2, the phpseclib dependancy was simply updated at the end of 2016 to v2+ without any change in core code, but can we expect this to work for magento 1 as well?
thanks, take care,
-robert kirscht
The main reason to run M1 on php7.1 is the php security support. Both php5.6 and 7.0 will no longer get security updates by the end of 2018. Source, php.net
Php 7.1 will continue getting security updates until 1 December 2019.
How did you handle the issue where subsequent releases of magento cannot be automatically upgraded using the Mage Downloader because of the “PHP < 6" requirement?
It’s interesting to note that you mention to use PHP 7.0 instead of 7.1 for compatibility reasons. I’ll keep that in mind next time!