How to Install PHP 8 on Ubuntu 20.04

PHP is arguably one of the most widely used server-side programming languages. It’s the language of choice when developing dynamic and responsive websites. In fact, popular CM platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, and Magento are based on PHP. Some other notable benefits of using PHP include the following:

1. Easy to learn; the syntax is simple and well organized.
2. PHP code can easily be edited at any time without messing up the entire code; this flexibility is very important for scripting languages.
3. Easy to integrate and have multi-platform support.
4. PHP is cost-effective because of open-source and highly efficient.
5. PHP is supported by a massive community of developers.
6. It is stable compared to other languages.

At the time of penning down this guide, the latest version of PHP is PHP 8.0. It was released on November 26, 2020. It boasts of new features and optimizations such as union types, named arguments, null safe operator, match expression, JIT, and improvements in error handling and consistency.

Step 1: System Update

Update all system packages to the latest, Run the following command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Step 2: Add the Ondřej Surý PPA Repository

The latest PHP packages are available in the Ondřej Surý PPA repository. Run the following command:

sudo apt-get install lsb-release ca-certificates apt-transport-https software-properties-common -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

When prompted, press ENTER to proceed with adding the repository.
Once the PPA is enabled, you can install PHP 8.

Step 3: Install PHP 8 With Extension

Next, Type the below command to install PHP 8.0 on the Ubuntu system.

sudo apt-get install php8.0

Press ‘Y’ for any confirmation asked by the installer.
To install PHP 8 extensions on Ubuntu 20.04, Run the following command:

sudo apt-get install php8.0-<extension>

Also Read : How to redirect HTTP to HTTPS Using htaccess

Some available extensions are as shown below:

sudo apt install php8.0-
php8.0-amqp       php8.0-common     php8.0-gd         php8.0-ldap       php8.0-odbc       php8.0-readline   php8.0-sqlite3    php8.0-xsl
php8.0-apcu       php8.0-curl       php8.0-gmp        php8.0-mailparse  php8.0-opcache    php8.0-redis      php8.0-sybase     php8.0-yac
php8.0-ast        php8.0-dba        php8.0-igbinary   php8.0-mbstring   php8.0-pgsql      php8.0-rrd        php8.0-tidy       php8.0-yaml
php8.0-bcmath     php8.0-dev        php8.0-imagick    php8.0-memcached  php8.0-phpdbg     php8.0-smbclient  php8.0-uuid       php8.0-zip
php8.0-bz2        php8.0-ds         php8.0-imap       php8.0-msgpack    php8.0-pspell     php8.0-snmp       php8.0-xdebug     php8.0-zmq
php8.0-cgi        php8.0-enchant    php8.0-interbase  php8.0-mysql      php8.0-psr        php8.0-soap       php8.0-xhprof
php8.0-cli        php8.0-fpm        php8.0-intl       php8.0-oauth      php8.0-raphf      php8.0-solr       php8.0-xml

Example:

sudo apt-get install php8.0-cli php8.0-common php8.0-imap php8.0-redis php8.0-snmp php8.0-xml php8.0-imagick php8.0-intl php8.0-fpm php8.0-imap