Anonymous classes in PHP 7

Question

Where can i use and should i use anonymous classes that are presented in PHP 7 ? I can't find a use case for them.

$message = (new class() implements Message { public function getText() { return "Message"; }}); 

Answer 1

You can find the information you are looking for here, where the RFC is presented.

The key points of the section "Use cases" are the following:

• Mocking tests becomes easy as pie. Create on-the-fly implementations for interfaces, avoiding using complex mocking APIs.
• Keep usage of these classes outside the scope they are defined in
• Avoid hitting the autoloader for trivial implementations

Answer 2

I also found this useful when writing unit tests for traits so you can test only the trait method i.e.:

trait MyTrait  {     public method foo(): string     {         return 'foo';     } } ... public function setUp(): void {     $this->testObject = (new class() {         use MyTrait;     }); } public function testFoo(): void {     $this->assertEquals('foo', $this->testObject->foo()); }