Why can't I overload constructors in PHP?

Question

I have abandoned all hope of ever being able to overload my constructors in PHP, so what I\'d really like to know is why.

Is there even a reason for it? Doe

Answer 1

You can of course overload any function in PHP using __call() and __callStatic() magic methods. It is a little bit tricky, but the implementation can do exactly what your are looking for. Here is the resource on the official PHP.net website:

https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.overloading.php#object.call

And here is the example which works for both static and non-static methods:

class MethodTest
{
    public function __call($name, $arguments)
    {
        // Note: value of $name is case sensitive.
        echo "Calling object method '$name' "
             . implode(', ', $arguments). "\n";
    }

    /**  As of PHP 5.3.0  */
    public static function __callStatic($name, $arguments)
    {
        // Note: value of $name is case sensitive.
        echo "Calling static method '$name' "
             . implode(', ', $arguments). "\n";
    }
}

$obj = new MethodTest;
$obj->runTest('in object context');

MethodTest::runTest('in static context');  // As of PHP 5.3.0

And you can apply this to constructors by using the following code in the __construct():

$clsName = get_class($this);
$clsName->methodName($args);

Pretty easy. And you may want to implement __clone() to make a clone copy of the class with the method that you called without having the function that you called in every instance...