Question

I’ve been reading through Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. I also develop in PHP and I wanted to implement the builder pattern outlined in item 2, but PHP doesn’t have inner classes. Is there any way to achieve this pattern in PHP, keeping the constructor for the product private?

Answer 1

Since PHP does not support inner classes, there must be a public method on the product class that creates an instance of it. Consider the following PHP classes:

<?php
class NutritionalFactsBuilder {
    private $sodium;
    private $fat;
    private $carbo;

    /**
     * It is preferred to call NutritionalFacts::createBuilder
     * to calling this constructor directly.
     */
    function __construct($s) {
        $this->sodium = $s;
    }

    function fat($f) {
        $this->fat = $f;
        return $this;
    }

    function carbo($c) {
        $this->carbo = $c;
        return $this;
    }

    function getSodium() {
        return $this->sodium;
    }

    function getFat() {
        return $this->fat;
    }

    function getCarbo() {
        return $this->carbo;
    }

    function build() {
        return new NutritionalFacts($this);
    }
}

class NutritionalFacts {
    private $sodium;
    private $fat;
    private $carbo;

    static function createBuilder($s) {
        return new NutritionalFactsBuilder($s);
    }

    /**
     * It is preferred to call NutritionalFacts::createBuilder
     * to calling this constructor directly.
     */
    function __construct(NutritionalFactsBuilder $b) {
        $this->sodium = $b->getSodium();
        $this->fat = $b->getFat();
        $this->carbo = $b->getCarbo();
    }
}

echo '<pre>';
var_dump(NutritionalFacts::createBuilder(10)->fat(23)->carbo(1)->build());
echo '</pre>';
?>

Note that in the above example the constructor of NutritionalFacts is public. Due to the constraints of the language, however, having a public constructor is not at all bad. Since one must call the constructor with a NutritionalFactsBuilder, there are only a limited number of ways to instantiate NutritionalFacts. Let’s compare them:

// NutritionalFacts Instantiation #0
$nfb = new NutritionalFactsBuilder(10);
$nfb = $nfb->fat(23)->carbo(1);
$nf0 = new NutritionalFacts($nfb);

// NutritionalFacts Instantiation #1
$nfb = new NutritionalFactsBuilder(10);
$nf1 = $nfb->fat(23)->carbo(1)->build();

// NutritionalFacts Instantiation #2
$nf2 = NutritionalFacts::createBuilder(10)->fat(23)->carbo(1)->build();

// NutritionalFacts Instantiation #3
// $nf3 = (new NutritionalFactsBuilder(10))->fat(23)->carbo(1)->build();

To leverage function chaining to its fullest extent, “NutritionalFacts Instantiation #2″ is the preferred usage.

“NutritionalFacts Instantiation #3″ shows another nuance of PHP syntax; one cannot chain a method on a newly instantiated object. Update: In PHP 5.4.0, there is now support for the syntax in “NutritionalFacts Instantiation #3.” I haven’t tested it yet though.

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Making the Constructor Private

You could make the constructor private, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If the constructor were made private, a public, static factory method would be necessary, as in the following code snippet. Looking at the below code, we might as well make the constructor public instead of introducing indirection just to make the constructor private.

class NutritionalFacts {
    private $sodium;
    private $fat;
    private $carbo;

    static function createBuilder($s) {
        return new NutritionalFactsBuilder($s);
    }

    static function createNutritionalFacts($builder) {
        return new NutritionalFacts($builder);
    }

    private function __construct($b) {
        $this->sodium = $b->getSodium();
        $this->fat = $b->getFat();
        $this->carbo = $b->getCarbo();
    }
}