Best practices for static constructors

Question

I want to create an instance of a class and call a method on that instance, in a single line of code.

PHP won\'t allow calling a method on a regular constructor:

Answer 1

These are called creation methods, and I typically name them createXXX() such as createById() or createEmptyCatalog(). Not only do they provide a nice way to reveal the different intentions of an object's constructors, but they enable immediate method chaining in a fluent interface.

echo Html_Img::createStatic('/images/missing-image.jpg')
        ->setSize(60, 90)
        ->setTitle('No image for this article')
        ->setClass('article-thumbnail');