CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phplaravelcoding-style
Tebe
Tebe

Reputation: 3214

Laravel - referencing the class

I've been reading a lot of documentation for Laravel during last week for the sake of learning what kind of beast it is.

I noticed one thing that whenever somebody references some class he references to it as string, e.g.:

  public function user()
  {
        return $this->belongsTo('App\User');
  }

Pay attention to 'App\User'

Taken from here https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/eloquent-relationships#polymorphic-relations

I wonder why don't they reference it as App\User::class ?

In this case it's easier to type and support the code, because it's easier later to follow the class pressing Ctrl+B. Also refactoring is easier and it's harder to make a mistake because IDE will warn you that class doesn't exist if you make a typo.

I see no reasons to reference class User as 'App\User' instead of App\User::class.

Do you see any?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 417

Answers (2)

omitobi
omitobi

Reputation: 7334

Taking from PHP doc Class Constants:

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:

This means that using User::class will at runtime resolve to 'App\User' according to the example you gave. So the choice is yours.

On a personal note, In order to avoid typographical mistakes with strings I prefer to use the class constant resolution, and also I can easily check the usage from my IDE.

Also I do not have to memorise the namespace of the class I am using.

Apart from these benefit, I do not see any difference unless there is performance difference which obviously does not seem so.

Upvotes: 1

lagbox
lagbox

Reputation: 50491

The actual string is used to illustrate that it is the full class name of the related model. You can very easily use Model::class. The example in the docs is explicit and removes any potential guess work from someone reading that argument.

Upvotes: 0

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