Developing classes

The traditional development approach is to place the class into its own file. Typically, classes contain logic that implements a single purpose. Classes are further broken down into self-contained functions which are referred to as methods. Variables defined inside classes are referred to as properties. It is recommended to develop a test class at the same time, a topic discussed in more detail in Chapter 13, Best Practices, Testing, and Debugging.

How to do it...

1. Create a file to contain the class definition. For the purposes of autoloading it is recommended that the filename match the classname. At the top of the file, before the keyword class, add a DocBlock. You can then define properties and methods. In this example, we define a class Test. It has a property $test, and a method getTest():

   <?php
   declare(strict_types=1);
   /**
    * This is a demonstration class.
    *
    * The purpose of this class is to get and set 
    * a protected property $test
    *
    */
   class Test
   {
   
     protected...