Re: How can I do this -- method chaining

Anup Shukla schreef:

Nathan Nobbe wrote:

Actually, I don't think so. I believe constructors return void, while the 'new' keyword returns a copy of the object.

im pretty sure constructors return an object instance: php > class Test { function __construct() {} } php > var_dump(new Test()); object(Test)#1 (0) { }

AFAIK, constructor simply constructs the object, and *new* is the one that binds the reference to the variable on the lhs.

not exactly - 'new' asks php to initialize an object of the given class, the 'binding' to a variable occurs because of the assignment operator. the __construct() method is called automatically by php after the object structure has been initialized, so primarily nothing is returned because the call to __construct() doesn't happen directly in userland code. at least that's how I understand it.

So, constructors return nothing.

but anyway, how could you even test that __construct() returned void and the new keyword returned a copy of the object? new essentially invokes __construct() and passes along its return value, near as i can tell. Christoph, if you dont want to write a function in the global namespace, as suggested in the article, Eric posted, just add a simple factory method in your class, eg. <?php class Test {

    public static function getInstance() {
        return new Test();
    }

    public function doSomething() {
        echo __METHOD__ . PHP_EOL;
    }

} Test::getInstance()->doSomething(); ?> -nathan