PHP method chaining or fluent interface?

Question

It's rather simple, really. You have a series of mutator methods that all return the original (or other) object. That way, you can keep calling methods on the returned object.

<?php
class fakeString
{
    private $str;
    function __construct()
    {
        $this->str = "";
    }
    
    function addA()
    {
        $this->str .= "a";
        return $this;
    }
    
    function addB()
    {
        $this->str .= "b";
        return $this;
    }
    
    function getStr()
    {
        return $this->str;
    }
}


$a = new fakeString();


echo $a->addA()->addB()->getStr();

This outputs "ab"

Try it online!

Basically, you take an object:

$obj = new ObjectWithChainableMethods();

Call a method that effectively does a return $this; at the end:

$obj->doSomething();

Since it returns the same object, or rather, a reference to the same object, you can continue calling methods of the same class off the return value, like so:

$obj->doSomething()->doSomethingElse();

That's it, really. Two important things:

1. As you note, it's PHP 5 only. It won't work properly in PHP 4 because it returns objects by value and that means you're calling methods on different copies of an object, which would break your code.

2. Again, you need to return the object in your chainable methods:

   public function doSomething() {
       // Do stuff
       return $this;
   }
   
   public function doSomethingElse() {
       // Do more stuff
       return $this;
   }
   

Try this code:

<?php
class DBManager
{
    private $selectables = array();
    private $table;
    private $whereClause;
    private $limit;

    public function select() {
        $this->selectables = func_get_args();
        return $this;
    }

    public function from($table) {
        $this->table = $table;
        return $this;
    }

    public function where($where) {
        $this->whereClause = $where;
        return $this;
    }

    public function limit($limit) {
        $this->limit = $limit;
        return $this;
    }

    public function result() {
        $query[] = "SELECT";
        // if the selectables array is empty, select all
        if (empty($this->selectables)) {
            $query[] = "*";  
        }
        // else select according to selectables
        else {
            $query[] = join(', ', $this->selectables);
        }

        $query[] = "FROM";
        $query[] = $this->table;

        if (!empty($this->whereClause)) {
            $query[] = "WHERE";
            $query[] = $this->whereClause;
        }

        if (!empty($this->limit)) {
            $query[] = "LIMIT";
            $query[] = $this->limit;
        }

        return join(' ', $query);
    }
}

// Now to use the class and see how METHOD CHAINING works
// let us instantiate the class DBManager
$testOne = new DBManager();
$testOne->select()->from('users');
echo $testOne->result();
// OR
echo $testOne->select()->from('users')->result();
// both displays: 'SELECT * FROM users'

$testTwo = new DBManager();
$testTwo->select()->from('posts')->where('id > 200')->limit(10);
echo $testTwo->result();
// this displays: 'SELECT * FROM posts WHERE id > 200 LIMIT 10'

$testThree = new DBManager();
$testThree->select(
    'firstname',
    'email',
    'country',
    'city'
)->from('users')->where('id = 2399');
echo $testThree->result();
// this will display:
// 'SELECT firstname, email, country, city FROM users WHERE id = 2399'

?>

Method chaining means that you can chain method calls:

$object->method1()->method2()->method3()

This means that method1() needs to return an object, and method2() is given the result of method1(). Method2() then passes the return value to method3().

Good article: http://www.talkphp.com/advanced-php-programming/1163-php5-method-chaining.html

Another Way for static method chaining :

class Maker 
{
    private static $result      = null;
    private static $delimiter   = '.';
    private static $data        = [];

    public static function words($words)
    {
        if( !empty($words) && count($words) )
        {
            foreach ($words as $w)
            {
                self::$data[] = $w;
            }
        }        
        return new static;
    }

    public static function concate($delimiter)
    {
        self::$delimiter = $delimiter;
        foreach (self::$data as $d)
        {
            self::$result .= $d.$delimiter;
        }
        return new static;
    }

    public static function get()
    {
        return rtrim(self::$result, self::$delimiter);
    }    
}

Calling

echo Maker::words(['foo', 'bob', 'bar'])->concate('-')->get();

echo "<br />";

echo Maker::words(['foo', 'bob', 'bar'])->concate('>')->get();