CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpperformanceclassoptimization
Ashish Awasthi
Ashish Awasthi

Reputation: 1502

ClassName::class vs 'ClassName' in PHP

In one of my projects we are having a function which validates objects like:

if( true == valObj( $someObj, 'SomeClass' ) ) {
    //Do some work;
}

While using this I thought this can be written like:

if( true == valObj( $someObj, SomeClass::class ) ) {
    //Do some work;
}

Now I just want to know which approach is better and why? Or are they same?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 676

Answers (3)

Erik Johansson
Erik Johansson

Reputation: 1656

The ::class notation is generally better as it allows for easier usage finding and thereby refactoring: If you use an IDE like PHPStorm you can easily rename a class, and it will find and update all usages of OldClassName::class to NewClassname::class. This is not the case for the hardcoded string variant.

If you use namespaces using this notation can also result in less inline characters.

If you are running a PHP version that supports this notation, use it :)

Upvotes: 2

Chetan Ameta
Chetan Ameta

Reputation: 7896

from php.net The special ::class constant are available as of PHP 5.5.0, and allows for fully qualified class name resolution at compile, this is useful for namespaced classes.

<?php
namespace foo {
    class bar {
    }

    echo bar::class; // foo\bar
}
?>

This is also a magic constant. have a look at http://php.net/manual/en/language.constants.predefined.php

Upvotes: 0

Niek van der Maaden
Niek van der Maaden

Reputation: 482

SomeClass::class returns the full namespace including the class name. Whilst if you use the string notation you have to add the namepace (if any) yourself.

Edit:

It doesn't matter which notation you choose, although I personally prefer the string notation as it shows you directly what namespace the class is in while scrolling through code.

Upvotes: 1

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