return $this - what is it returning?

[[email protected]]

Hello!

 

In trying to understand Zend Framework a little better I've been going through some of the core library code.  I've been tracing the general path from Zend_Application.

 

I've noticed several times that a method simply returns 'return $this'.  I've never seen that before.  It's really cool and I'm excited to understand what it means.  Below is one example:

 

found in Zend_Loader_Autoloader

    public function setAutoloaders(array $autoloaders)

    {

        $this->_autoloaders = $autoloaders;

        return $this;

    }

 

I really appreciate this help!

[Mchl]

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.basic.php

[[email protected]]

Thank you for the answer.  I understand using $this->whatever or $this->whatever($blah) but the difficulty I'm having is that there is nothing after the word '$this'.  It's not pointing to anything. 

[Mchl]

It returns the object itself. See this example:

 

<?php

class example {

public function returnSelf() {
	return $this;
}
}

$var1 = new example();

$var2 = $var1->returnSelf();

var_dump($var1);

var_dump($var2);

[[email protected]]

Oh, I see. That makes sense.  So, in a sense, when I create an object  $obj = new Class() that object is being returned in a similar way as 'return $this;'. 

 

Thank you, again for your response.  That's very kind.