Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP

Benjamin Crozat

Modified on Nov 23, 2022 • 2 comments • Edit on GitHub

This warning message occurs because class constructors can’t have the same name as their class. You can fix this by changing it to __construct().

1. Grab your favorite code editor and search for class definitions across your project;
2. Check for constructor methods with the same name as the class and change it to __construct.

Your modifications should look like this:

class Foo
{
-     public function Foo()
+     public function __construct()
    {
    }
}

That’s it, it’s as simple as that.

But did you know the story behind this change?

In PHP 4, as you know, a constructor was declared with the same name as its class. It was still working in PHP 5, was deprecated in PHP 7.0, and removed in PHP 8.0. That is why you must rename your constructors before migrating to version 8 or greater.

For posterity, you can read more about it on the official PHP documentation: PHP deprecated features in version 7.0.x

You can also see the PHP RFC that led to this: PHP RFC: Remove PHP 4 Constructors