[php] Nested or Inner Class in PHP

I'm building a User Class for my new website, however this time I was thinking to build it little bit differently...

C++, Java and even Ruby (and probably other programming languages) are allowing the use of nested/inner classes inside the main class, which allows us to make the code more object-oriented and organized.

In PHP, I would like to do something like so:

<?php
  public class User {
    public $userid;
    public $username;
    private $password;

    public class UserProfile {
      // some code here
    }

    private class UserHistory {
      // some code here
    }
  }
?>

Is that possible in PHP? How can I achieve it?

UPDATE

If it's impossible, will future PHP versions might support nested classes?

Real nested classes with public/protected/private accessibility were proposed in 2013 for PHP 5.6 as an RFC but did not make it (No voting yet, no update since 2013 - as of 2021/02/03):

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/nested_classes

class foo {
    public class bar {
 
    }
}

At least, anonymous classes made it into PHP 7

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/anonymous_classes

From this RFC page:

Future Scope

The changes made by this patch mean named nested classes are easier to implement (by a tiny bit).

So, we might get nested classes in some future version, but it's not decided yet.

As per Xenon's comment to Anil Özselgin's answer, anonymous classes have been implemented in PHP 7.0, which is as close to nested classes as you'll get right now. Here are the relevant RFCs:

Nested Classes (status: withdrawn)

Anonymous Classes (status: implemented in PHP 7.0)

An example to the original post, this is what your code would look like:

<?php
    public class User {
        public $userid;
        public $username;
        private $password;

        public $profile;
        public $history;

        public function __construct() {
            $this->profile = new class {
                // Some code here for user profile
            }

            $this->history = new class {
                // Some code here for user history
            }
        }
    }
?>

This, though, comes with a very nasty caveat. If you use an IDE such as PHPStorm or NetBeans, and then add a method like this to the User class:

public function foo() {
  $this->profile->...
}

...bye bye auto-completion. This is the case even if you code to interfaces (the I in SOLID), using a pattern like this:

<?php
    public class User {
        public $profile;

        public function __construct() {
            $this->profile = new class implements UserProfileInterface {
                // Some code here for user profile
            }
        }
    }
?>

Unless your only calls to $this->profile are from the __construct() method (or whatever method $this->profile is defined in) then you won't get any sort of type hinting. Your property is essentially "hidden" to your IDE, making life very hard if you rely on your IDE for auto-completion, code smell sniffing, and refactoring.

Put each class into separate files and "require" them.

User.php

<?php

    class User {

        public $userid;
        public $username;
        private $password;
        public $profile;
        public $history;            

        public function __construct() {

            require_once('UserProfile.php');
            require_once('UserHistory.php');

            $this->profile = new UserProfile();
            $this->history = new UserHistory();

        }            

    }

?>

UserProfile.php

<?php

    class UserProfile 
    {
        // Some code here
    }

?>

UserHistory.php

<?php

    class UserHistory 
    {
        // Some code here
    }

?>

It is waiting for voting as RFC https://wiki.php.net/rfc/anonymous_classes

You cannot do this in PHP. However, there are functional ways to accomplish this.

For more details please check this post: How to do a PHP nested class or nested methods?

This way of implementation is called fluent interface: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface

You can, like this, in PHP 7:

class User{
  public $id;
  public $name;
  public $password;
  public $Profile;
  public $History;  /*  (optional declaration, if it isn't public)  */
  public function __construct($id,$name,$password){
    $this->id=$id;
    $this->name=$name;
    $this->name=$name;
    $this->Profile=(object)[
        'get'=>function(){
          return 'Name: '.$this->name.''.(($this->History->get)());
        }
      ];
    $this->History=(object)[
        'get'=>function(){
          return ' History: '.(($this->History->track)());
        }
        ,'track'=>function(){
          return (lcg_value()>0.5?'good':'bad');
        }
      ];
  }
}
echo ((new User(0,'Lior','nyh'))->Profile->get)();

You can't do it in PHP. PHP supports "include", but you can't even do that inside of a class definition. Not a lot of great options here.

This doesn't answer your question directly, but you may be interested in "Namespaces", a terribly ugly\syntax\hacked\on\top\of PHP OOP: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.rationale.php

Since PHP version 5.4 you can force create objects with private constructor through reflection. It can be used to simulate Java nested classes. Example code:

class OuterClass {
  private $name;

  public function __construct($name) {
    $this->name = $name;
  }

  public function getName() {
    return $this->name;
  }

  public function forkInnerObject($name) {
    $class = new ReflectionClass('InnerClass');
    $constructor = $class->getConstructor();
    $constructor->setAccessible(true);
    $innerObject = $class->newInstanceWithoutConstructor(); // This method appeared in PHP 5.4
    $constructor->invoke($innerObject, $this, $name);
    return $innerObject;
  }
}

class InnerClass {
  private $parentObject;
  private $name;

  private function __construct(OuterClass $parentObject, $name) {
    $this->parentObject = $parentObject;
    $this->name = $name;
  }

  public function getName() {
    return $this->name;
  }

  public function getParent() {
    return $this->parentObject;
  }
}

$outerObject = new OuterClass('This is an outer object');
//$innerObject = new InnerClass($outerObject, 'You cannot do it');
$innerObject = $outerObject->forkInnerObject('This is an inner object');
echo $innerObject->getName() . "\n";
echo $innerObject->getParent()->getName() . "\n";

I think I wrote an elegant solution to this problem by using namespaces. In my case, the inner class does not need to know his parent class (like the static inner class in Java). As an example I made a class called 'User' and a subclass called 'Type', used as a reference for the user types (ADMIN, OTHERS) in my example. Regards.

User.php (User class file)

<?php
namespace
{   
    class User
    {
        private $type;

        public function getType(){ return $this->type;}
        public function setType($type){ $this->type = $type;}
    }
}

namespace User
{
    class Type
    {
        const ADMIN = 0;
        const OTHERS = 1;
    }
}
?>

Using.php (An example of how to call the 'subclass')

<?php
    require_once("User.php");

    //calling a subclass reference:
    echo "Value of user type Admin: ".User\Type::ADMIN;
?>