Tahsin Abrar

Posted on Jan 2

A Small PHP Tip That Saves Time (and Lines of Code)

#codequality #tutorial #productivity #php

I was recently reviewing a PHP project. The code worked fine. Tests were passing. No bugs.

But something caught my eye.

The same pattern was repeated again and again in almost every class constructor. It’s not wrong, but since PHP 8.0, we don’t need to write it this way anymore.

This post is a quick, practical PHP tip about classes and constructors that can make your code cleaner, shorter, and easier to read.

The Old Habit We Still Write

This is something I still see in many real projects:

class UserService
{
    private string $name;
    private int $age;

    public function __construct(string $name, int $age)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
        $this->age = $age;
    }
}

Nothing is technically wrong here.

But when a project has:

50+ classes
Each class has 5–10 properties

You end up writing the same lines again and again.

It’s boring, repetitive, and easy to mess up when refactoring.

PHP 8.0 Changed This Forever

Since PHP 8.0, we have a feature called:

Constructor Property Promotion

It lets you declare and assign class properties directly inside the constructor.

Let’s rewrite the same class.

The Modern Way (Cleaner & Shorter)

class UserService
{
    public function __construct(
        private string $name,
        private int $age
    ) {
    }
}

That’s it.

What Just Happened?

No separate property declaration
No $this->name = $name;
Same behavior
Less code
Easier to read

Your brain now focuses on what the class needs, not boilerplate code.

Public, Protected, or Private? Your Choice

You’re not limited to private. You can use any visibility.

class Post
{
    public function __construct(
        public string $title,
        public string $content,
        private int $authorId
    ) {
    }
}

This works exactly as expected.

A Real-Life Refactor Story

While reviewing a Laravel project, I found a service class with 12 properties.

The constructor alone was almost 30 lines long.

I did this:

Selected the constructor
Used VS Code Quick Edit / Multi-cursor
Converted all properties to constructor promotion

The result:

Constructor went from 30 lines to 6 lines
No logic changed
Code became easier to scan during reviews

This refactor took less than 2 minutes.

When You Should Use This

Constructor property promotion is perfect when:

Properties are only set in the constructor
You don’t need extra logic during assignment
You want clean, modern PHP code

When You Should NOT Use It

Avoid it if:

You need validation before assignment
You modify values before storing them
You want to keep constructor logic very explicit

Example where the old way is still better:

public function __construct(string $email)
{
    $this->email = strtolower($email);
}

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