Method Chaining in PHP with example

Method chaining is a programming technique that's widely used in object-oriented languages like PHP to make invoking several methods on an object in a single line of code faster and more effective. If you can chain several method calls on the same object together, your code will be shorter and simpler to understand.

Here's an explanation of method chaining in PHP with an example:

Creating an Object: First, you need to create an object from a class. This object is where you'll chain your methods.

class MyClass {
    private $value;

    public function __construct($initialValue) {
        $this->value = $initialValue;
    }

    public function setValue($newValue) {
        $this->value = $newValue;
        return $this; // Return $this to enable chaining
    }

    public function add($number) {
        $this->value += $number;
        return $this; // Return $this to enable chaining
    }

    public function multiply($number) {
        $this->value *= $number;
        return $this; // Return $this to enable chaining
    }

    public function getValue() {
        return $this->value;
    }
}

$myObject = new MyClass(10);

2. Method Chaining: Once you have an object, you can chain its methods together like this:

$result = $myObject->setValue(5)->add(3)->multiply(2)->getValue();

In this example, we start with the object $myObject, call the setValue method with an argument of 5, then chain the add method with an argument of 3, and finally chain the multiply method with an argument of 2. The result of this method chaining is stored in the $result variable.

3. Returning $this: To enable method chaining, each method within the class should return $this. This allows you to call another method on the same object in the chain.

public function setValue($newValue) {
    $this->value = $newValue;
    return $this; // Return $this to enable chaining
}

By returning $this, you're returning the current object instance, which allows you to call another method on it immediately.

4. Final Result: In the example above, $result will contain the value 16. Here's how it's calculated:

• setValue(5) sets the value to 5.
• add(3) adds 3 to the current value, making it 8.
• multiply(2) multiplies the current value by 2, resulting in a final value of 16.

Method chaining is useful for creating more readable and concise code when you need to perform a series of operations on an object. It's commonly used in libraries and frameworks to provide a fluent and expressive API for users.