I often see PHP newbies (and even not-so-newbies) who are confused by the world of object-oriented programming (OOP). At least part of this confusion results from the vast majority of introductory books and tutorials for PHP beginning by teaching procedural programming techniques, treating OOP as an “advanced” subject with a chapter or two at the end. Thus the student is exposed to a bunch of new syntax concerning classes and objects with, at best, a very brief explanation as to “why” that syntax should be used. A purely object-oriented language such as Java or Ruby, on the other hand, will by its nature require that beginners’ resources more fully address the theory of OOP.
I am not going to claim to be an OOP guru, but I can point you to a few resources I have used to become reasonably proficient — but still learning! — with PHP classes and objects. First I would point you to an on-line tutorial at Sun.com: “Lesson: Object-Oriented Programming Concepts“. While the (relatively few) examples in these tutorials are in Java, the syntax is quite similar to that of PHP, and the lessons they illustrate are easily transferred to PHP. If you want to work with those examples yourself in PHP, I would recommend taking a look at a couple PHP tutorials at IBM.com: “Getting started with objects in PHP V5” and “Advanced PHP V5 objects“.
Once you’ve gotten past the basics, to see how things can work together as an OOP whole, I strongly suggest you get your hands on Matt Zandstra’s book, PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice. Reading this book is what ultimately made objects “click” in my mind. After reading it I felt much more comfortable with the underlying concepts along with the specific techniques for applying them in my PHP projects.
