How will you access the reference to same object within the object in PHP ?

Last Updated : 14 Dec, 2022

In this article, we will see how we can access the reference to the same object within that object in PHP.

To do that we have to use the “$this” keyword provided by PHP.

PHP $this Keyword:

It is used to refer to the current object
It can only be used inside the internal methods of the class.
$this keyword can refer to another object only if it is inside a static method and it is called from the context of a secondary object.
It is generally used in constructors to store the value inside the object’s variables.

Example 1: Let’s see a simple example of using $this in PHP. We have a class GFG that is having a “$value” variable and a “show()” function to return the value.

PHP

<?php 
      // this keyword example 
    class GFG { 
        public $value = 10; 
        public function show() { 
            // referencing current object 
            // within the object 
            return $this -> value;  
        } 
    } 
    $obj = new GFG(); 
    echo $obj -> show(); 
?> 

Output:

Example 2: We have created a Class “Vegetable” having $name and $color properties and we are using $this keyword to access the methods.

PHP

<?php 
    class Vegetable { 
        public $name; 
        public $color; 
            
        function set_name($name) { 
            $this->name = $name; 
        } 
        function get_name() { 
            return $this->name; 
        } 
    } 
  
    $carrot = new Vegetable (); 
    $ladyfinger = new Vegetable (); 
    $carrot->set_name('Carrot'); 
    $ladyfinger->set_name('Ladyfinger'); 
  
    echo $carrot->get_name(); 
    echo "<br>"; 
    echo $ladyfinger->get_name(); 
?> 