Question

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Benefits of using a constructor?

hello coders. I am newbie to OOP in php. I am doing a project in objects and class. where
most of time I face a line

public function __construct(){
}

I can’t understand this. Why its used and what is its value. Can some one tell me about it. I went to the php.net site but my doubt not cleared.

Answer 1

The __construct allows arguments to be passed to an object on initalisation, without you would do something like this:

$myobj = new Object();
$myobj->setName('Barry');

But if you have this:

public function __construct($name='')
{
    $this->name = $name;
}

You can just do:

$myobj = new Object('Barry');

Another possible use for the constructor (though not good practice):

public function __construct()
{
    ob_start(); //Some random code that you may want to run as soon as object is initialised
}