PHP - Traits

 PHP support only single inheritance. Traits are a mechanism for code reuse in single inheritance languages such as PHP. A trait is intended to reduce some limitation of single inheritance by enabling a developer to reuse set of method freely in several independent classes living in different class hierarchies.

PHP support only single inheritance : A child class can inherit only from one single parent. 

If a class need multiple behaviors - OOPS traits solve this problem.  

Traits are used to declare methods that can be used in multiple classes. Traits can have methods and abstract methods that can be used in multiple classes, and the methods can have any access modifier (public, private, or protected).

Traits are declared with the trait keyword:

Syntax - 

<?php
trait TraitName {
  // some code...
}
?>

A Trait is similar to a class, but only intended to group functionality in a fine-grained and consistent way. It is not possible to instantiate a Trait on its own. It is an addition to traditional inheritance and enables horizontal composition of behavior; that is, the application of class members without requiring inheritance.

<?php
class Base {
    public function sayHello() {
        echo 'Hello ';
    }
}

trait SayWorld {
    public function sayHello() {
        parent::sayHello();
        echo 'World!';
    }
}

class MyHelloWorld extends Base {
    use SayWorld;
}

$o = new MyHelloWorld();
$o->sayHello();
?>

Multiple traits - 

Multiple Traits can be inserted into a class by listing them in the use statement, separated by commas.

<?php
trait Hello {
    public function sayHello() {
        echo 'Hello ';
    }
}

trait World {
    public function sayWorld() {
        echo 'World';
    }
}

class MyHelloWorld {
    use Hello, World;
    public function sayExclamationMark() {
        echo '!';
    }
}

$o = new MyHelloWorld();
$o->sayHello();
$o->sayWorld();
$o->sayExclamationMark();
?>

If two Traits insert a method with the same name, a fatal error is produced, if the conflict is not explicitly resolved.

To resolve naming conflicts between Traits used in the same class, the insteadof operator needs to be used to choose exactly one of the conflicting methods.

Since this only allows one to exclude methods, the as operator can be used to add an alias to one of the methods. Note the as operator does not rename the method and it does not affect any other method either.

<?php
trait A {
    public function smallTalk() {
        echo 'a';
    }
    public function bigTalk() {
        echo 'A';
    }
}

trait B {
    public function smallTalk() {
        echo 'b';
    }
    public function bigTalk() {
        echo 'B';
    }
}

class Talker {
    use A, B {
        B::smallTalk insteadof A;
        A::bigTalk insteadof B;
    }
}

class Aliased_Talker {
    use A, B {
        B::smallTalk insteadof A;
        A::bigTalk insteadof B;
        B::bigTalk as talk;
    }
}
?>