Welcome back! Now that you have a solid understanding of classes and objects in PHP, it's time to build on that knowledge by exploring inheritance. Consider it a natural progression in our journey into object-oriented programming (OOP).

Inheritance allows you to create a new class based on an existing class. By using inheritance, you can reuse code, add new features, and make your programs easier to manage and understand. Let's dive in and see what it's all about.

In this lesson, you'll understand how to use inheritance in PHP. We'll cover:

1. What Inheritance Is
2. How to Implement Inheritance in PHP
3. Why Inheritance Is Beneficial

Inheritance is a way to establish a relationship between a new class (child class) and an existing class (parent class). The child class inherits properties and behaviors (methods) from the parent class.

Here’s a simple example:

In this snippet, the Student class inherits from the Person class. It reuses the name and age attributes and methods from the Person class and adds a new attribute major and a new display method to show the student's major.

When you declare a child class, you specify the parent class it inherits from by using the extends keyword. The child class can then extend or override the functionality of the parent class.

In our example:

• The Person class is the parent class.
• The Student class is the child class, inheriting name and age from the Person class.
• The Student class also adds a new member, major, and overrides the display method to include information about the major.
  • Notice how Student::display() calls parent::display() to reuse the parent class functionality before adding its details.
  • The greet method is also called from the display method to show how the child class can access parent class methods.

In PHP, the protected access modifier plays a critical role in class inheritance. When you declare a class property or method as protected, it means that it can be accessed within the class itself and by inheriting child classes. However, it cannot be accessed from outside these classes. This allows child classes to have controlled access to the parent class’s members.

Let's consider an example to illustrate the use of the protected modifier:

In this example:

• The Animal class has a protected property $name and a protected method describe().
• The Dog class, which inherits from Animal, is able to access the protected property $name and the method describe(), showcasing the ability of the protected modifier to allow access within the child class.
• Attempting to access $dog->name or $dog->describe() outside of these classes will result in a fatal error, as they are protected members.

Using protected allows encapsulation while still providing flexibility for inheritance, which enhances the design of object-oriented applications.

Inheritance is powerful for several reasons:

1. Code Reusability: Instead of rewriting common functionalities, you can inherit them from a parent class, making maintenance easier and reducing errors.
2. Extension: You can extend existing code by adding new features to a child class without changing the existing parent class.
3. Hierarchy: It helps in organizing code in a hierarchical manner, which reflects real-world relationships and improves code readability and structure.

Inheritance is a cornerstone of OOP, and understanding it will enable you to design more flexible and scalable applications. It's an essential concept for mastering OOP.

Excited to start practicing? Let's move on and put this theory into action!