PHP Advanced for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickPro Guide

Creating Constructors

A constructor is a function (or method) within a class that has the exact same name as the class itself. The advantage of a constructor is that it will be executed automatically when an instance of the class is created. A constructor could be used to connect to a database, set cookies, or create an HTML header.

The syntax for a constructor is simple:

class ClassName { 
   function ClassName () {
        // Function code.
   }
}

With this format, the following code both creates an instance of the object and then calls the ClassName() function, saving a step.

$object = new ClassName(); 

Remember that constructors work only if the class contains a method with the same name as the class itself (which is why the protocol is to use the same ...