Magic Method toString in OOP in PHP
The first magic method we will
study is called __toString. It is
called when attempting to convert a class instance
to a string. Let's figure out what
this means. Suppose we have the following class
User:
<?php
class User
{
private $name;
private $age;
public function __construct($name, $age)
{
$this->name = $name;
$this->age = $age;
}
public function getName()
{
return $this->name;
}
public function getAge()
{
return $this->age;
}
}
?>
Let's create an object of this class:
<?php
$user = new User('john', 25);
?>
Now let's try to output the created object
via echo:
<?php
$user = new User('john', 25);
echo $user;
?>
Attempting to output an object via echo
is a conversion to a string. In this
case, PHP will throw an error because objects
cannot be converted to a string just like that.
To remove the error, we must
explicitly tell PHP what to do when
attempting to convert an object to a string. This
is what the magic method
__toString exists for.
If we create such a method in our class code,
then the result of this method (i.e., what
it returns via return) will be the string
representation of the object.
Suppose we want the user's name
to be displayed when trying to output
the object via echo. So let's create the method __toString
and return the value of the name property in it:
<?php
class User
{
private $name;
private $age;
public function __construct($name, $age)
{
$this->name = $name;
$this->age = $age;
}
// Implement the specified method:
public function __toString()
{
return $this->name;
}
public function getName()
{
return $this->name;
}
public function getAge()
{
return $this->age;
}
}
?>
Let's test:
<?php
$user = new User('john', 25);
echo $user; // will output 'john' - it works!
?>
Create a class User, in which there will be
properties name and surn.
Make it so that when
outputting the object via echo to the screen,
a string with the user's first and last name is displayed.
