PHP Classes: Constructors and Instance Methods

Define an object

A class describes its objects’ properties and methods. Use new with the class name to create an instance. A constructor named __construct can initialize properties from the arguments supplied at creation.

Access instance data

Inside an instance method, $this refers to the current object. The arrow operator accesses its properties and methods. Each instance can therefore use the same method definition with different stored data.

A common mistake

A local variable and an object property are different locations. Assigning $name = $name does not store a constructor argument in a property; use $this->name = $name.

<?php class Label { public function __construct(private string $name) {} public function text(): string { return $this->name; } } echo (new Label("Ada"))->text();

Ada