Difference between interface and traits in php

Other answers did a great job of explaining differences between interfaces and traits. I will focus on a useful real world example, in particular one which demonstrates that traits can use instance variables - allowing you add behavior to a class with minimal boilerplate code.

Again, like mentioned by others, traits pair well with interfaces, allowing the interface to specify the behavior contract, and the trait to fulfill the implementation.

Adding event publish / subscribe capabilities to a class can be a common scenario in some code bases. There's 3 common solutions:

1. Define a base class with event pub/sub code, and then classes which want to offer events can extend it in order to gain the capabilities.
2. Define a class with event pub/sub code, and then other classes which want to offer events can use it via composition, defining their own methods to wrap the composed object, proxying the method calls to it.
3. Define a trait with event pub/sub code, and then other classes which want to offer events can use the trait, aka import it, to gain the capabilities.

How well does each work?

#1 Doesn't work well. It would, until the day you realize you can't extend the base class because you're already extending something else. I won't show an example of this because it should be obvious how limiting it is to use inheritance like this.

#2 & #3 both work well. I'll show an example which highlights some differences.

First, some code that will be the same between both examples:

An interface

interface Observable {
    function addEventListener($eventName, callable $listener);
    function removeEventListener($eventName, callable $listener);
    function removeAllEventListeners($eventName);
}

And some code to demonstrate usage:

$auction = new Auction();

// Add a listener, so we know when we get a bid.
$auction->addEventListener('bid', function($bidderName, $bidAmount){
    echo "Got a bid of $bidAmount from $bidderName\n";
});

// Mock some bids.
foreach (['Moe', 'Curly', 'Larry'] as $name) {
    $auction->addBid($name, rand());
}

Ok, now lets show how the implementation of the Auction class will differ when using traits.

First, here's how #2 (using composition) would look like:

class EventEmitter {
    private $eventListenersByName = [];

    function addEventListener($eventName, callable $listener) {
        $this->eventListenersByName[$eventName][] = $listener;
    }

    function removeEventListener($eventName, callable $listener) {
        $this->eventListenersByName[$eventName] = array_filter($this->eventListenersByName[$eventName], function($existingListener) use ($listener) {
            return $existingListener === $listener;
        });
    }

    function removeAllEventListeners($eventName) {
        $this->eventListenersByName[$eventName] = [];
    }

    function triggerEvent($eventName, array $eventArgs) {
        foreach ($this->eventListenersByName[$eventName] as $listener) {
            call_user_func_array($listener, $eventArgs);
        }
    }
}

class Auction implements Observable {
    private $eventEmitter;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->eventEmitter = new EventEmitter();
    }

    function addBid($bidderName, $bidAmount) {
        $this->eventEmitter->triggerEvent('bid', [$bidderName, $bidAmount]);
    }

    function addEventListener($eventName, callable $listener) {
        $this->eventEmitter->addEventListener($eventName, $listener);
    }

    function removeEventListener($eventName, callable $listener) {
        $this->eventEmitter->removeEventListener($eventName, $listener);
    }

    function removeAllEventListeners($eventName) {
        $this->eventEmitter->removeAllEventListeners($eventName);
    }
}

Here's how #3 (traits) would look like:

trait EventEmitterTrait {
    private $eventListenersByName = [];

    function addEventListener($eventName, callable $listener) {
        $this->eventListenersByName[$eventName][] = $listener;
    }

    function removeEventListener($eventName, callable $listener) {
        $this->eventListenersByName[$eventName] = array_filter($this->eventListenersByName[$eventName], function($existingListener) use ($listener) {
            return $existingListener === $listener;
        });
    }

    function removeAllEventListeners($eventName) {
        $this->eventListenersByName[$eventName] = [];
    }

    protected function triggerEvent($eventName, array $eventArgs) {
        foreach ($this->eventListenersByName[$eventName] as $listener) {
            call_user_func_array($listener, $eventArgs);
        }
    }
}

class Auction implements Observable {
    use EventEmitterTrait;

    function addBid($bidderName, $bidAmount) {
        $this->triggerEvent('bid', [$bidderName, $bidAmount]);
    }
}

Note that the code inside the EventEmitterTrait is exactly the same as what's inside the EventEmitter class except the trait declares the triggerEvent() method as protected. So, the only difference you need to look at is the implementation of the Auction class.

And the difference is large. When using composition, we get a great solution, allowing us to reuse our EventEmitter by as many classes as we like. But, the main drawback is the we have a lot of boilerplate code that we need to write and maintain because for each method defined in the Observable interface, we need to implement it and write boring boilerplate code that just forwards the arguments onto the corresponding method in our composed the EventEmitter object. Using the trait in this example lets us avoid that, helping us reduce boilerplate code and improve maintainability.

However, there may be times where you don't want your Auction class to implement the full Observable interface - maybe you only want to expose 1 or 2 methods, or maybe even none at all so that you can define your own method signatures. In such a case, you might still prefer the composition method.

But, the trait is very compelling in most scenarios, especially if the interface has lots of methods, which causes you to write lots of boilerplate.

* You could actually kinda do both - define the EventEmitter class in case you ever want to use it compositionally, and define the EventEmitterTrait trait too, using the EventEmitter class implementation inside the trait :)

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