What is the function __construct used for?

I have been noticing __construct a lot with classes. I did a little reading and surfing the web, but I couldn’t find an explanation I could understand. I am just beginning with OOP.

I was wondering if someone could give me a general idea of what it is, and then a simple example of how it is used with PHP?

Answer

__construct was introduced in PHP5 and it is the right way to define your, well, constructors (in PHP4 you used the name of the class for a constructor). You are not required to define a constructor in your class, but if you wish to pass any parameters on object construction then you need one.

An example could go like this:

class Database {
  protected $userName;
  protected $password;
  protected $dbName;

  public function __construct ( $UserName, $Password, $DbName ) {
    $this->userName = $UserName;
    $this->password = $Password;
    $this->dbName = $DbName;
  }
}

// and you would use this as:
$db = new Database ( 'user_name', 'password', 'database_name' );

Everything else is explained in the PHP manual: click here