Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours, Third Edition

What Is an Object?

An object is an enclosed bundle of variables and functions forged from a special template called a class. Objects hide a lot of their inner workings away from the code that uses them, providing instead easy interfaces through which you can send them orders and they can return information. These interfaces are special functions called methods. All the methods of an object have access to special variables called properties.

By defining a class, you lay down a set of characteristics. By creating objects of that type, you create entities that share these characteristics but might initialize them as different values. You might create an automobile class, for example. This class would have a color characteristic. All automobile ...