haphpiness

Property Hooks — get/set Without the Boilerplate

PHP 8.4's headline feature: property hooks let you define get and set behavior directly on a property declaration. No more writing boilerplate getter/setter methods. Properties can now have logic and still be accessed with $object->property syntax.

class User {
    public string $fullName {
        get => $this->firstName . ' ' . $this->lastName;
    }

    public string $email {
        set(string $value) {
            $this->email = strtolower(trim($value));
        }
    }

    public function __construct(
        public string $firstName,
        public string $lastName,
        public string $email,
    ) {}
}

$user = new User('Rasmus', 'Lerdorf', ' Rasmus@PHP.net ');
echo $user->fullName;  // "Rasmus Lerdorf" — computed on access
echo $user->email;     // "rasmus@php.net" — normalized on set

// Virtual properties — no backing storage needed
class Temperature {
    public float $celsius {
        get => ($this->fahrenheit - 32) / 1.8;
        set(float $value) => $this->fahrenheit = $value * 1.8 + 32;
    }

    public function __construct(
        public float $fahrenheit,
    ) {}
}

$t = new Temperature(212);
echo $t->celsius;  // 100.0
$t->celsius = 0;
echo $t->fahrenheit;  // 32.0

Property hooks work with interfaces (you can require a property to have a get or set hook), with readonly, and with constructor promotion. They're the biggest OOP addition since traits.