Re-iterating the Use Of Traits

For so many years now, Php Developers have always envied their Java colleagues for so many reasons which i wouldn’t be stating here to preserve my lovely life . One of such reasons is “Multiple Inheritance”.

Php has been a single inheritance language for so long, but after so many years of praying and fasting from the Php faithfuls, the God of Php decided to bless us with a gift – Traits.

Traits are a mechanism for reusing code in Php, a cool alternative to Java’s Multiple Inheritance. As of Php 5.4.0, you can comfortably use Traits in your php applications. Let’s dive straight it to see how Traits work.

<?php
trait YesBoss{
public function sayIt(){
  echo "Say it ";
}
public function hitIt(){
  echo "Hit it ";
 }
}
class Boss{
public function doIt(){
  echo "Do it ";
 }
}
class Manager extends Boss{
  use YesBoss;
public function hitIt(){
  echo "Don't Hit It ";
 }
}
$worker = new Manager;
$worker->sayIt();
$worker->doIt();
$worker->hitIt();
?>

<?php

trait YesBoss{

public function sayIt(){

echo "Say it ";

}

public function hitIt(){

echo "Hit it ";

}

class Boss{

public function doIt(){

echo "Do it ";

}

class Manager extends Boss{

use YesBoss;

public function hitIt(){

echo "Don't Hit It ";

}

$worker = new Manager;

$worker->sayIt();

$worker->doIt();

$worker->hitIt();

Output : Say It Do It Don’t Hit It

Notice the precedence, class Manager has the ability to override methods from a trait which it did here in our example by overriding hitIt() method from traits YesBoss.

class Manager also inherits from class Boss and traits yesBoss. A class can also inherit from multiple traits. For example,

<?php
trait Mammals{
public function sleep(){
  echo "Mammals can sleep";
 }
}
trait Birds{
public function eat(){
   echo "Birds can eat";
  }
}
class Animals{
public function sound(){
  echo "Animals have sounds";
 }
}
class Human extends Animals{
  use Mammals,Birds;
}
$being = new Human;
$being->sleep();
$being->eat();
$being->sound();
?>

<?php

trait Mammals{

public function sleep(){

echo "Mammals can sleep";

}

trait Birds{

public function eat(){

echo "Birds can eat";

}

class Animals{

public function sound(){

echo "Animals have sounds";

}

class Human extends Animals{

use Mammals,Birds;

}

$being = new Human;

$being->sleep();

$being->eat();

$being->sound();

Output: Mammals can sleep Birds can eat Animals have sounds.

A lot of Php developers haven’t taken hold of this powerful feature yet, ..My advice to you is use traits today, it will make your life a whole lot easier.

About the Author
Latest Posts

About PROSPER OTEMUYIWA

Food Ninja, Code Slinger, Technical Trainer, Accidental Writer, Open Source Advocate and Developer Evangelist.

How to build your own Youtube – Part 10 - August 1, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 9 - July 25, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 8 - July 23, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 6 - July 6, 2016
Introducing Laravel Password v1.0 - July 3, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 5 - June 28, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 4 - June 23, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 3 - June 15, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 2 - June 8, 2016
How to build your own Youtube – Part 1 - June 1, 2016

Oyebanji Jacob Mayowa PyJac

Another Nice Tutorial

But the examples, to me, can be better explained this way

sleep();
$being->eat();
$being->sound();
$being->work();
echo ‘Bird:’;
$bird = new Bird;
$bird->sleep();
$bird->eat();
$bird->sound();
$bird->fly();
?>
Traits, i think, is better used to allot the Cans of a Class making them also reusable by Other related Classes….
jimbavia

Eloquent !
- Oyebanji Jacob Mayowa PyJac
http://picrasma-excelsa.blogspot.com/ Florence Okosun

My question is, why overwrite the traits method when the whole idea is “copy and paste” some code to execute at run time!
- Prosper
  
  I really don’t understand the “copy and paste” . Please shed more light on that @picrasmaexcelsa:disqus

Goodheads

Re-iterating the Use Of Traits

About PROSPER OTEMUYIWA

Lumen : The Powerful Micro-framework by Laravel

The Splat Operator