OOPS Features Supported by PHP

by Vincy. Last modified on July 1st, 2022.

PHP supports both procedural and Object-Oriented programming. Object-Oriented methodologies will be useful and effective while working with complex or huge-size projects.

It helps to compartmentalize the project-based domains and programming layers to make it easy to handle. In this tutorial, we are going to see some of the important OOPS features supported by PHP like Class, Object, Encapsulation, Inheritance and more. I have described these features with simple examples.

Class

The class is a programming block structure that contains its own properties and methods to process the domain functionalities. We can create instances for a class to access its properties and method.

The following example code shows a Mobile() class containing the properties and methods. In this example, I have specified an access specifier for the class properties and methods. These access specifiers are used to restrict the visibility of the class properties and methods.

<?php

class Mobile
{

    private $premiumModal = "iPhone";

    public function getPrimiumModal()
    {
        return $this->premiumModal;
    }
}
?>

Object

Objects or Instances can be created for a class to access the class components. The below PHP code shows how to create an object to the Mobile() class and it is used to access the class components.

<?php

class Mobile
{

    private $premiumModal = "iPhone";

    public function getPrimiumModal()
    {
        return $this->premiumModal;
    }
}
$object = new Mobile();
echo "<b>Premium Modal:</b> " . $object->getPrimiumModal() . "<br/>";
?>

Constructor and Destructor

The Constructor is a class function called automatically when an instance is created for that class. The Destructor is a function that is invoked when the class instance is destroyed.

In PHP, the constructor and the destructor are defined by using the magic functions __construct() and __destruct() respectively. The following code shows an example of the class constructor used to initialize its private property.

<?php

class Mobile
{

    private $modal;

    function __construct()
    {
        $this->modal = array(
            "iPhone",
            "Samsung Galaxy",
            "MotoG"
        );
    }

    function printAllModal()
    {
        foreach ($this->modal as $modal) {
            print $modal . "<br/>";
        }
    }
}

$object = new Mobile();
echo "<b>All Modals:</b><br/>";
$object->printAllModal();
?>

Inheritance

There are three types of inheritance single, multiple and multi-level inheritance. PHP supports single and multi-level inheritance. It will not support multiple inheritances.

That is, A class can extend only one parent class. To overcome this limitation, PHP provides the Traits concept which allows us to use functions of one class in one or more classes. We have a detailed article about PHP inheritance with more examples.

Encapsulation

Since properties and methods of the objects are enclosed with the class container in an abstract manner, any code from outside can not access the class, unless otherwise by using objects of that class. In this way, the properties are encapsulated.

Vincy
Written by Vincy, a web developer with 15+ years of experience and a Masters degree in Computer Science. She specializes in building modern, lightweight websites using PHP, JavaScript, React, and related technologies. Phppot helps you in mastering web development through over a decade of publishing quality tutorials.

Comments to “OOPS Features Supported by PHP”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

↑ Back to Top

Share this page