Some lesser known facts of Traits in PHP
Traits in PHP is a way of re-using the code. Basically, Traits are assistive copy-paste mechanism provided by the language itself. Using Traits, developers can reduce the limitations of single inheritence based languages such as PHP. I have written a dedicated article about it if you want to check it out.
- Use of
useis different for Traits - Traits can access private properties of a class
__CLASS__is more magical in traits
Here in this article, I want to talk about a few interesting things about Traits which I think is useful if you work with Traits regularly.
Use of use is different for Traits
Normally, When used for namespaces, the “use” keyword treats the argument as an absolute path. So, take following for example.
<?php
namespace Foo\Bar;
use Foo\TestClass;
?>
Here, use will load the entire \Foo\TestClass (the initial \ is optional) class as an absolute path. But in case of Traits, the use keyword will treat the argument relative to the current namespace. Take following for example.
<?php
namespace Amit\Module;
class SomeClass
{
use Foo\SomeTrait; // This will be \Amit\Module\Foo\SomeTrait
}
?>
In the example above, the use keyword will treat the Trait in question as \Amit\Module\Foo\SomeTrait.
Traits can access private properties of a class
Traits have the access to the properties and methods of the class in which they are used. This includes private properties and methods as well.
<?php
trait TestTrait
{
protected function accessVar()
{
return $this->var;
}
}
class ConsumerClass
{
use TestTrait;
private $var = 'private variable';
public function getVar()
{
return $this->accessVar();
}
}
$consumer = new ConsumerClass();
echo $consumer->getVar(); // 'private variable'
?>
As you can see in the example above, the method accessVar() is able to access the private property of the class ConsumerClass.
__CLASS__ is more magical in traits
The magic constant __CLASS__, if used in a trait and if that trait is used in a class, will return the name of the class.
<?php
trait sayWhere
{
public function whereAmI()
{
echo __CLASS__;
}
}
class Hello
{
use sayWHere;
}
class World
{
use sayWHere;
}
$a = new Hello;
$a->whereAmI(); //Hello
$b = new World;
$b->whereAmI(); //World
?>
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