I really love the way Laravel handels a lot off stuff, especially Eloquent. But can someone explain to me how I can make stuff like this on my own? an example:
$object = new Calculator;
$outcome = $object->add(15)->subtract(5)->calc();
In this case I have "one" line of code, with multiple calls to functions with the arrows ( -> ). The part that I wonder about is how could I write something like this myself so I can use multiple arrows instead of having to do it like I normally would with my classes:
$object = new Calculator;
$object->add(15);
$object->subtract(5);
$outcome = $object->calc();
Hope someone can explain this to me on a low level so I can understand it quite well ^^
It's up to you to implement a fluent interface when you write your functions. I'd highly recommend looking into the Laravel/Illuminate source code to see how Taylor makes extensive use of this.
Basically for your Calculator methods, just make sure you return a reference to the class itself, then you can chain these method calls the way you want, as the next call always gets passed a reference to the correct class.
Calculator::add(Integer $addend) {
$this->sum += $addend;
return $this; // this allows for the fluent-chaining
}
