As an object-orientted programming language, PHP 5 allows developers to declare constructor methods for classes.
Classes which have a constructor method will call this method on each newly-created object.
So in a way, constructor is used to automate the task of creating a new object.
The destructor method will be called when there are no references to a particular object, or during the shutdown sequence.
In the code below, the destructor will be called when the running of php script is completed.
<?php class PopStar { public $person; public $salary; public $album; function __construct($pop, $sal, $alb ) { echo "Construct function automatically called"; echo "<br>"; $this->person = $pop; $this->salary = $sal; $this->album = $alb; } function __destruct(){ echo "Destruct function automatically called"; echo "<br>"; } public function getSalary() { echo $this->salary; } } $star = new PopStar("Madonna", 10000, "Crazy For You"); echo "The pop star salary is:"; echo "<br>"; $star->getSalary(); echo "<br>"; ?>
The output from running the above script is: