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PHP 8 Programming Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

Improving Code Using Typed Properties

Discover how typed properties in PHP 8 enforce data integrity at the class property level, preventing unintended type changes. Learn to improve your code quality, reduce bugs, and minimize the amount of code by eliminating the need for traditional getter and setter methods while maintaining strict data handling.

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Earlier, we discussed how data types can be used to control the type of data supplied as arguments to functions or class methods. What this approach fails to do, however, is guarantee that the data type never changes. In this lesson, we will learn how assigning a data type at the property level provides stricter control over the use of variables in PHP 8.

What are typed properties?

This extremely important feature was introduced in PHP 7.4 and continues in PHP 8. Simply put, a typed property is a class property with a data type preassigned. Here is a simple example:

PHP
<?php
// Creating a Test class
declare(strict_types=1);
class Test
{
	public int $id = 0;
	public int $token = 0;
	public string $name = '';
}
// Creating object of Test class
$test = new Test();
$test->id = 'ABC';
// causes Fatal Error
?>

In this example, if we attempt to assign a value representing a data type other than int to $test->id, a Fatal error is thrown. As we ...