PHP7.2 Object Return Type Declarations

April 10, 2019

As of PHP 7.2 we can finally return type declarations for the object data type. (I know that reads funny, but it’s a true statement!)

Here is an example:

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class MyClass {
  public $var = 'Hello World';
}

$myclass = new MyClass;

function getTestType(MyClass $arg) : object {
  return $arg;
}

echo getTestType($myclass)->var;

Previous PHP versions would shit their pants over this with a fatal error:

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Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: Return value of test() must be an instance of object, instance of MyClass returned in app/index.php:10

Now, of course, we get “Hello World!”