Code Inspection: Old style constructor

Reports old-style constructor declarations (ClassName()) and suggests replacing them with new-style constructors (__construct()).

Prior to PHP 8.0, old-style constructor syntax used in the classes in the global namespace is treated as deprecated and will result in an E_DEPRECATED error. If both a __construct() and a ClassName() method are defined, __construct() will be called.

In namespaced classes, or any classes as of PHP 8.0, a ClassName() method never has any special meaning and will never be called as a constructor. As a result, the inspection does not report such cases if the PHP language level is set to 8.0 or later.

See Constructors and destructors (php.net) for details.

Using old-style constructors is highly discouraged. In PHP 7, such usages will raise an E_DEPRECATED notice. In future PHP versions, support for old-style constructors will be removed. In the following example, the constructor for class Example is defined in the old form.

                class Example {
                    public function Example() {}
                }
            

                class Example {
                    public function __construct() {}
                }
            

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Last modified: 11 February 2024