When to wrap curly braces around a variable

Question

I don\'t know how to explain this but in simple terms I have seen people using {$variable} when outputting values. I have noticed that {$variable}

Answer 1

A couple of years late but may I add:

You can even use variable in curly braces to access methods of an Object from a Class dynamically.

Example:

$username_method = 'username';
$realname_method = 'realname';

$username = $user->{$username_method}; // $user->username;
$name = $user->{$realname_method}; // $user->realname

Not a good example but to demonstrate the functionality.

Another Example as per @kapreski's request in the comments.

/**Lets say you need to get some details about the user and store in an 
array for whatever reason.  
Make an array of what properties you need to insert. 
The following would make sense if the properties was massive. Assume it is
**/

$user = $this->getUser(); //Fetching User object

$userProp = array('uid','username','realname','address','email','age');

$userDetails = array();

foreach($userProp as $key => $property) {
    $userDetails[] =  $user->{$property};       
}

print_r($userDetails);

Once the loop completes you will see records fetched from user object in your $userDetails array.

Tested on php 5.6