What is encapsulation with simple example in php?

Question

What is encapsulation with simple example in php?

Answer 1

People seem to be mixing up details of object orientation with encapsulation, which is a much older and wider concept. An encapsulated data structure

• can be passed around with a single reference, eg increment(myDate) rather than increment(year,month,day)
• has a set of applicable operations stored in a single program unit (class, module, file etc)
• does not allow any client to see or manipulate its sub-components EXCEPT by calling the applicable operations

You can do encapsulation in almost any language, and you gain huge benefits in terms of modularisation and maintainability.