In PHP, can you instantiate an object and call a method on the same line?

What I would like to do is something like this:

$method_result = new Obj()->method();

Instead of having to do:

$obj = new Obj();
$method_result = $obj->method();

The result doesn't actually matter to me in my specific case. But, is there a way to do this?

Solution 1:

The feature you have asked for is available from PHP 5.4. Here is the list of new features in PHP 5.4:

http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.new-features.php

And the relevant part from the new features list:

Class member access on instantiation has been added, e.g. (new Foo)->bar().

Solution 2:

You cannot do what you are asking ; but you can "cheat", using the fact that, in PHP, you can have a function that has the same name as a class ; those names won't conflict.

So, if you declared a class like this :

class Test {
    public function __construct($param) {
        $this->_var = $param;
    }
    public function myMethod() {
        return $this->_var * 2;
    }
    protected $_var;
}

You can then declare a function that returns an instance of that class -- and has exactly the same name as the class :

function Test($param) {
    return new Test($param);
}

And now, it becomes possible to use a one-liner, like you asked -- only thing is you are calling the function, thus not using new :

$a = Test(10)->myMethod();
var_dump($a);

And it works : here, I'm getting :

int 20

as output.

And, better, you can put some phpdoc on your function :

/**
 * @return Test
 */
function Test($param) {
    return new Test($param);
}

This way, you'll even have hints in your IDE -- at least, with Eclipse PDT 2.x ; see the screeshot :

Edit 2010-11-30 : Just for information, a new RFC has been submitted, a few days ago, that proposes to add this feature to one of the future versions of PHP.

See : Request for Comments: Instance and method call/property access

So, maybe doing things like these will be possible in PHP 5.4 or another future version :

(new foo())->bar()
(new $foo())->bar
(new $bar->y)->x
(new foo)[0]

Solution 3:

You can do it more universally by defining an identity function:

function identity($x) {
    return $x;
}

identity(new Obj)->method();

That way you don't need to define a function for each class.