Quick "->" related question

[nexgen_x]

Havn't done much php for the last couple of years, but have started up again and slowly relearning stuff.

Can someone quickly remind me what "->" does? (ie. $var->id). Is it just the same as =?

Probably a dead simple answer, but it's really hard to google/search for "->" 😉

[mtmosier]

It accesses a property or method of an object.

[nexgen_x]

could you extrapolate a bit? I still don't quite understand...

[vt_dave]

if $var is an object then -> access one of its members much like C++. Unlike C++ there is no private / public differentiation in php, so classes are more like structs.

Regardless if you have a class like:

Class foo
{
var $bar

function ChangeBar() {
$this->bar = "asdf";
}

}

if you then create a foo object in php

$myFoo = new foo;

if you say $myFoo->bar = "qwert"

then the variable $bar inside the class $myFoo is changed, however if you then call

$myFoo->ChangeBar();
echo $myFoo->bar;

it will echo "asdf"

Hope that helps
-Dave

[mtmosier]

Oh, sorry. You said you had past experience, so I assumed it would just click for you.

We're talking about oop here. Here's a simple example to illustrate.

Say you had a class called test defined like this.

class test {
    var $value1;
    var $value2;

function getValue2() {
    return $this->value2;
}

function getValue1() {
    return $this->value1;
}

function setValue1($value1) {
    $this->value1 = $value1;
}
}

You could access the member functions and properties like this

$testobj = new test();

$testobj->setValue1("Hello World!\n");
echo $testobj->getValue1();
$testobj->value2 = "Yo";
echo $testobj->getValue2();

[nexgen_x]

Thanks folks

Yeah, I have past experience but even back then it was still relatively limited I guess ¬_¬