Migration from legacy helpers

The compatibility methods below remain callable unless noted otherwise, but new code should use their replacements. They can be removed in the next major release after downstream callers have migrated.

Legacy API

Replacement

Format::search_wizard()

Format::search_clause() with PDO bindings

Format::in_wizard()

Format::in_clause() with PDO bindings

Format::pre()

Format::debug(), emitted by the application when appropriate

Format::array_to_string()

PHP’s implode()

Format::fullname()

String interpolation

Validation::comma()

An explicit str_replace() at the input boundary

Validation::clear_number()

Explicit validation followed by an integer cast

Password::strength()

Password::meets_policy() or a maintained estimator

Password::encode() / decode()

Base64 functions in an encoding component

Password::digest() / set_method()

Password::hash() for passwords; PHP’s hash() for checksums

Math::even_or_odd()

Math::by_parity() with an explicit index

Math::iterate() and iterator accessors

A local counter

File::read_file_contents()

File::read_csv()

File::force_download()

File::prepare_download() plus an application response

Export::export_file()

Export::build() or Export::save()

Website keywords state

Omit it; search engines ignore meta keywords

User_Agent

Feature detection, Client Hints, or a maintained parser

Directory_Lister::listing() is now data-only. It no longer prints debug HTML when print is supplied and no longer adds an open anchor to each file row.

The ignored cURL binary_transfer response option was removed because its PHP constant is deprecated. Email::show() and Email::mailto() now return safe HTML directly rather than generating calls to document.write().