Programming Tutorials

The Object (compound) Type in PHP

By: Jeffrey Printer Friendly Format    

Like every programming language, PHP offers the usual basic primitive types which can hold only one piece of data at a time (scalar). I am particularly fond of the "object" type (compound) because that allows me to group many basic PHP types together, and I can name it anything I want.

<?php
class Person
{
$firstName; // a PHP String
$middleName; // a PHP String
$lastName; // a PHP String
$age; // a PHP Integer
$hasDriversLicense; // a PHP Boolean 
}
?>

Here, I have grouped several basic PHP types together, (3) Strings, (1) Integer, and (1) Boolean... then I named that group "Person". Since I used the proper syntax to do so, this code is pure PHP, which means that if you run this code, you would have an extra PHP "type" available to you in your scripts, like so:

<?php
$myAge = 16; // a PHP Integer - always available
$yourAge = 15.5; // a PHP Float - always available
$hasHair = true; // a PHP Boolean - always available
$greeting = "Hello World!" // a PHP String - always available

$person = new Person(); // a PHP Person - available NOW!
?>