PHP OOP Protected Properties

PHP OOP Protected Properties

Properties and methods come in the form of public, private and protected. Public means any class can use them. Meanwhile, private properties can only be used by the class where they are declared and protected properties can be used by the class that defines them and their subclasses.

The code below shows how a subclass can call a protected function from its parent class from the constructor. The property from the parent class is returned from the function. After that, this variable is returned. The code near the bottom $test = new Form(); instantiates the object. The property is printed using echo $test->myvar2;

<?php

class Tag
{

    public $a;
    public $b;
    public $c;

    public function fromparent()
    {
        echo "hey public";
    }

    private function fromprivateparent()
    {
        echo "hey private";
    }

    protected function fromprotectedparent()
    {
        echo "Hey protected variable called: ";
        $this->myvar = "testin";
        return $this->myvar;
    }

}

class Form extends Tag
{

    public $test = '';

    function __construct()
    {
        $this->test = new Tag();
        $this->myvar2 = $this->test->fromprotectedparent();
        return $this->myvar2;
    }


}

$test = new Form();
echo $test->myvar2;

?>

Output

August 17, 2014 by kent