I have a Laravel 4.2 application which works with PHP5 without any problems. Since I installed a new vagrant box running PHP7 an error appears as soon as I run a model where the name of a function is the same as the class name (relationship-function) like this:
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletingTrait;
class Participant extends \Eloquent
{
use SoftDeletingTrait;
[...]
public function participant()
{
return $this->morphTo();
}
[...]
}
I get the following error message:
Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; Participant has a deprecated constructor (View: ...)
So what I didn't know until today is, that in PHP4 methods with the same name were the contructor of a class. Hmm. I am really a bad programmer... But in this case, from my understanding of what is happening in PHP7, they correct a failure of mine as I never wanted to use this function as a constructor, since it defines only an Eloquent relationship.
But how can I get rid of this message? As I understand this, in PHP4 my code was buggy, but not in PHP7, right? If not necessary I do not want to refactor this function, as it is used in several places.
Can anybody explain what I am doing wrong and why it worked with older PHP versions?
Thanks!
As I understand this, in PHP4 my code was buggy, but not in PHP7, right?
Not quite. PHP4-style constructors still work on PHP7, they are just been deprecated and they will trigger a Deprecated warning.
What you can do is define a __construct
method, even an empty one, so that the php4-constructor method won't be called on a newly-created instance of the class.
class foo
{
public function __construct()
{
// Constructor's functionality here, if you have any.
}
public function foo()
{
// PHP4-style constructor.
// This will NOT be invoked, unless a sub-class that extends `foo` calls it.
// In that case, call the new-style constructor to keep compatibility.
self::__construct();
}
}
new foo();
It worked with older PHP versions simply because constructors don't get return value. Every time you created a Participant instance, you implicitly call the participant
method, that's all.
PHP 4 style constructors (methods that have the same name as the class they are defined in) are deprecated, and will be removed in the future. PHP 7 will emit E_DEPRECATED if a PHP 4 constructor is the only constructor defined within a class. Classes that implement a __construct() method are unaffected.
<?php
class foo {
function foo() {
echo 'I am the constructor';
}
}
?>
You can keep your old constructor but you need to add a new construct like that:
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletingTrait;
class Participant extends \Eloquent
{
use SoftDeletingTrait;
[...]
public function __construct()
{
return $this->morphTo();
}
public function participant()
{
return $this->morphTo();
}
[...]
}