Upgrade to PHP for Calculated Merge Fields

Modified on Wed, 5 Jun, 2024 at 2:07 PM

Actionstep upgraded the version of PHP used for Calculated Merge Fields to 8.1 in early 2023.

PHP 8.1 offers increased:

Security
Performance
Stability
Support

This upgrade only affected the version of PHP supported for use in Calculated Merge Fields. As such, some of your fields may need to be updated to code supported in PHP 8.1.

Additionally, this upgrade removed of the money_format() function, which returns a string formatted as a currency string. This function was deprecated in PHP 7.4 and removed in 8.0. Below are examples of a typical implementation of money_format() and a code to replace it.

NOTE: In the codes below, $variable is in place of the number to be formatted. This could be a number from an Actionstep merge field used in your calculation or a numeric value, e.g. 123.45

Previous code example:

money_format ('%#4n',$variable) ;

To replace the money_format() function, you can use the NumberFormatter class.

New code example:

$fmt = numfmt_create( 'en_EN', NumberFormatter::CURRENCY ); 

echo numfmt_format_currency($fmt, $variable, "USD")."\n";

Finally, in PHP 8.1, the following functions were deprecated.

strftime
date_sunrise
strptime
gmstrftime

In PHP version upgrades after 8.1, these functions may have been removed. If your calculation codes use these functions, they may not work after the next upgrade was implemented.

Upgrade to PHP for Calculated Merge Fields

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