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# Object cloning

Creating a copy of an object with fully replicated properties is not always the wanted behavior. A good example of the need for copy constructors, is if you have an object which represents a GTK window and the object holds the resource of this GTK window, when you create a duplicate you might want to create a new window with the same properties and have the new object hold the resource of the new window. Another example is if your object holds a reference to another object which it uses and when you replicate the parent object you want to create a new instance of this other object so that the replica has its own separate copy.

An object copy is created by using the clone keyword (which calls the object's __clone() method if possible). An object's __clone() method cannot be called directly.

    $copy_of_object = clone $object;

When an object is cloned, PHP 5 will perform a shallow copy of all of the object's properties. Any properties that are references to other variables, will remain references. If a __clone() method is defined, then the newly created object's __clone() method will be called, to allow any necessary properties that need to be changed.

Example 19-31. Cloning an object
`<?php class SubObject { static $instances = 0; public $instance; public function __construct() { $this->instance = ++self::$instances; } public function __clone() { $this->instance = ++self::$instances; } } class MyCloneable { public $object1; public $object2; function __clone() { // Force a copy of this->object, otherwise // it will point to same object. $this->object1 = clone($this->object1); } } $obj = new MyCloneable(); $obj->object1 = new SubObject(); $obj->object2 = new SubObject(); $obj2 = clone $obj; print("Original Object:\n"); print_r($obj); print("Cloned Object:\n"); print_r($obj2); ?>`
The above example will output:
`Original Object: MyCloneable Object ( [object1] => SubObject Object ( [instance] => 1 ) [object2] => SubObject Object ( [instance] => 2 ) ) Cloned Object: MyCloneable Object ( [object1] => SubObject Object ( [instance] => 3 ) [object2] => SubObject Object ( [instance] => 2 ) )`

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