Inheritance in PHP Programming Language

Inheritance is a fundamental aspect of object-oriented programming that enables classes to inherit properties and methods from another class. In PHP programming language, inheritance is achieved through the use of the extends keyword, which creates a subclass that inherits from a superclass.

Inheritance is a powerful feature of object-oriented programming that allows you to reuse code, improve code organization and make your code more modular. Inheritance also helps to reduce code duplication and helps to make your code more manageable.

Creating Subclasses in PHP

To create a subclass in PHP, you need to create a new class that extends the superclass. The syntax for creating a subclass in PHP is as follows:

class SubClass extends SuperClass {
  // Subclass code goes here
}

In the above example, SubClass is the name of the subclass, and SuperClass is the name of the superclass. The subclass can then inherit all the properties and methods of the superclass.

Inheritance in PHP follows the single inheritance model, which means a subclass can only inherit from one superclass. However, a superclass can have multiple subclasses.

Using Superclass Members in Subclasses

Once you have created a subclass, you can use the properties and methods of the superclass by accessing them using the parent keyword. The parent keyword is used to access the superclass’s members from the subclass.

For example, if the superclass has a method called display(), you can use the parent::display() method to call the superclass’s display() method from the subclass.

class SuperClass {
  public function display() {
    echo "This is the superclass.";
  }
}

class SubClass extends SuperClass {
  public function display() {
    parent::display();
    echo "This is the subclass.";
  }
}

$subClass = new SubClass();
$subClass->display();

In the above example, the SubClass overrides the display() method of the superclass but still uses the parent::display() method to call the superclass’s display() method.

Conclusion

In conclusion, inheritance is a powerful feature of OOP that allows subclasses to inherit properties and methods from a superclass. In PHP programming language, you can create subclasses using the extends keyword and use the parent keyword to access the superclass’s members. Inheritance provides an efficient way to organize code and reuse it as well as avoid code duplication.