constructors

[alain dhaene]

Hi,

Is it possible to have more constructors in the same class?

e.g

class person
{
function person($name)
{
}

function search($name,$age)
{
}

}
//make object

$person1 = new person("genesis");
$person2 = new person("U2",40);

thx.

Alain

[Alain Dhaene]

oeps,
That's wrong it must be:

class person

{
function person($name)
{
}

function person($name,$age)
{
}

}
//make object

$person1 = new person("genesis");
$person2 = new person("U2",40);

thx.
"alain dhaene" <a.******@instruct.be> schreef in bericht
news:40**********************@news.skynet.be... Hi,

Is it possible to have more constructors in the same class?

e.g

class person
{
function person($name)
{
}

function search($name,$age)
{
}

}
//make object

$person1 = new person("genesis");
$person2 = new person("U2",40);

thx.

Alain

[Berislav Lopac]

alain dhaene wrote:

Is it possible to have more constructors in the same class?

As I understand it, all methods in PHP follow the general functions rule,
which is that you can't redeclare a function. Unlike Java, where a method's
signature includes the arguments and the return type besides the name
itself, in PHP the "signature" is only the method's name.

However, you can "overload" a function by stating optional arguments, which
are defined in fuction definition, but can be avoided when calling the
function/method.

In your example, the constructor could be:

person($name, $age = NULL)

and your two example calls would work.

Berislav

[Jochen Buennagel]

Berislav Lopac wrote:

In your example, the constructor could be:

person($name, $age = NULL)

and your two example calls would work.

If you need different kinds of arguments for different constructors
(e.g. person($name) and person($sex, $age)), you can also do the following:

class person {
function person(){
switch (func_num_args()) {
case 1:
$this->name = func_get_arg(0);
break;
case 2:
$this->sex = func_get_arg(0);
$this->age = func_get_arg(1);
break;
default:
die ('wrong number of arguments for constructor');
}
}
}

You could further check the types of the arguments in different places,
e.g. if func_get_arg(0) is a string of "m" or "f", treat the call as
person($sex, $age), otherwise treat it as person($name, $age)

Jochen