Difference between Trait and an Abstract Class in PHP
I recently came across Traits in PHP and I'm trying to understand them. During my research I stumbled upon this Stack Overflow question: Traits vs. Interfaces. The accepted answer mentions the following:
An interface defines a set of methods that the implementing class must implement.
When a trait is use'd the implementations of the methods come along too--which doesn't happen in an Interface.
So far so good but this sounds exactly like the difference between an interface and an abstract class to me. So this raises a follow-up question for me:
- What is the difference between a Trait and an Abstract Class in PHP?
I am aware that I can extend from only one abstract class and on the other hand use any amount of traits. But is this really the only difference? I still don't completely understand traits and its use.
Answer
Traits allow you to share code between your classes without forcing you into a specific class hierarchy. Say you want all your classes to have the convenient utility method foo($bar); without traits you have two choices:
- implement it individually with code redundancy in each class
- inherit from a common (abstract) ancestor class
Both solution aren't ideal, each with their different tradeoffs. Code redundancy is obviously undesirable, and inheriting from a common ancestor makes your class hierarchy design inflexible.
Traits solve this problem by letting you implement foo($bar) in a trait which each class can "import" individually, while still allowing you to design your class hierarchy according to business logic requirements, not language necessities.