Most Popular PHP Magic Methods

PHP features the concept of magic methods : methods that have a special function. They are related to other PHP features, and are automatically called on an object, when available. 

For example, the __toString() method is called whenever an object is converted to a string : this may be with a type cast, a call to echo or print, or a concatenation. When such method is not available, a default behavior is used.

There are no less than 15 magic methods in PHP. : 

• __construct
• __destruct
• __call
• __callStatic
• __get
• __set
• __isset
• __unset
• __sleep
• __wakeup
• __toString
• __invoke
• __set_state
• __clone
• __debugInfo

Most Popular PHP Magic Methods

We polled a corpus of 1705 Open Source applications, to check their respective usage of magic methods. Anytime a project defines, at least once, a magic method, it is counted. 

A few notes

• All magic methods are quite popular. This is a widely used concept.
• The most common magic method is __construct(), by far. It is almost compulsory for a class, yet it is surprisingly low in usage, at 63%.
• __toString() is quite popular
• __debugInfo() was introduced in PHP 5.6
• __get() is more popular than __set();__sleep()is more popular than__wakeup()`. 
• __destruct() is only used half the time of __construct(). 
• __serialize() and __unserialize() are only available in PHP 7.4. Either those projects are already compatible, or they will have to refactor some code.