PHP is deprecating rand() functions in PHP 8.3

[chrisblakley]

Will need to find alternatives throughout Nebula and monitor vendor libraries for support as well.

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecations_php_8_3#mt_rand_php

Seems like random_int() is the alternative now.

[chrisblakley]

Locations in Nebula itself where these appear:

• Admin.php
• Utilities.php
• Analytics.php
• Shortcodes.php
• Functions.php
• metadata.php

Also appears in scssphp (x5) and plugin-update-checker (x2). There is an update available to the latter, but I doubt it addresses this quite yet.

[chrisblakley]

Need to find an alternative to mt_getrandmax() as well which is used in metadata.php.

'?nocache' . mt_rand(1000, mt_getrandmax()) . '=debug' . mt_rand(1000, mt_getrandmax())

This is what I came up with:

'?nocache' . random_int(1000, PHP_INT_MAX) . '=debug' . random_int(1000, PHP_INT_MAX)

However, for this particular implementation I'll probably simplify to:

'?nocache' . random_int(100000, 999999) . '=debug' . random_int(100000, 999999)

[chrisblakley]

Nebula has been updated, but still needs scssphp and plugin-update-checker to be updated before this can be closed.

Note that random_int() requires the libsodium package in PHP, so make sure that is always installed on servers.

[chrisblakley]

Here is what vendor libraries are using:

• mt_getrandmax() in scssphp in Compiler.php
• mt_rand() in scssphp in Compiler.php several times
• mt_rand() in PUC in OAuthSinature.php several times

[chrisblakley]

The scssphp library minimum version support for 2.0 is PHP 8.1 #2234 so once that is the minimum version for Nebula, I'll check for these functions again. At that time, the Plugin Update Checker library can also be updated/checked again, too.