PHP Object Oriented Programming
PHP provides extensive support for developing object-oriented software. The area of object oriented programming is, however, large. Entire books can, and indeed have, been dedicated to the subject. As such, a detailed overview of object oriented software development is beyond the scope of this PHP book. Instead we will introduce the basic concepts involved in object oritent programming and thyen move on to explaining the concept in related to PHP development.
What is an Object?
An object is a self-contained piece of functionality that can be easily used, and re-used as the building blocks for a software application.
Objects consist of data variables (called members) and functions that can be called on the object to perform tasks (called methods).
What is a Class?
Much like a blueprint or architect's drawing defines what an item or a building will look like once it has been contructed, a class defines what anm object will look like when it is created. It defines, for example what the methods will do and what thge member variables will be.
How is an Object Created from a Class?
The process of creating an object from the class 'blueprint' is called instantiation. Essentially you instiate an isntance of the class and give that instance a name by which you will refer to it when acessing members and calling methods. You can create as many object instances of a class as you desire. Objects are instantiated using the new keyword. For example to create an instance of a class called bankAccount you would write:
$accountObject = new bankAccount();
In the above example we now have an object called $accountObjhect of type bankAccount.
What is sub-classing?
It is possible to build class that are derived from other classes, extending the functionality of the parent class to make it specific to a particular requirement. For example you might have a vehicle class which contains the attributes common to all vehicles, and a sub-class called car which inherits all the generic vehicle attributes but adds some its own car specific methods and properties.
Defining a PHP Class
Before an object can be instantiated we first need to define the class 'blueprint' for the object. Classes are defined using the class keyword following by braces which will be used to enclose the body of the class:
<?php
class bankAccount {
}
?>
We have now defined a class. The next step is add some functionality to the class.
PHP Class Constructors and Destructors
The next step in creating a class is to define what should happen when an object is first instantiated using the class, and also when that object is later destroyed. These actions are defined the constructor and destructor methods of the class.
The constructor and destructor are really just functions that get called when the object is created and destroyed and are defined in the class body using the function keyword. This needs to be prefixed with the public qualifier. This means the method is accessible to code outside of the object. The default names fo rthe constructor and destructor are __construct and __destruct respectively. Both methods can take arguments to be used in initializing the object. These are declared in the same way arguments are defiend in any function (see PHP Functions for details).
We can now expend out bankAccount class to include a constructor and destructor:
<?php
class bankAccount {
public function __construct($accountNumber, $accountName) {
echo 'Object was just instantiated. Number = $accountNumber, Name = $accountName <br>';
}
public function __destruct() {
echo 'Object was just destroyed <br>';
}
}
?>
When the example is loaded into a browser we should get the following output:
Object was just instantiated. Number = 123456, Name = Gregory House
Object was just destroyed
