Old Style Constructors

Since PHP 4, the constructor of a class was the method with the same name as the class. In PHP 7, it was changed to use the __construct method by default, and, in case this is missing and for backward compatibility reasons, use the method with the same name. In PHP 8.0, this old style constructor is not used anymore.

PHP code

<?php

class x {
     function x() {
             print __METHOD__;
     }
}

new x();
?>

Before

x::x

After

PHP version change

This behavior was deprecated in Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; x has a deprecated constructor

This behavior changed in 8.0