Welcome to the Treehouse Community

The Treehouse Community is a meeting place for developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels to get support. Collaborate here on code errors or bugs that you need feedback on, or asking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project. Join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today. (Note: Only Treehouse students can comment or ask questions, but non-students are welcome to browse our conversations.)

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and a supportive community. Start your free trial today.

PHP Object-Oriented PHP Basics Building the Recipe Separating Methods

Yohan Park
Yohan Park
7,148 Points
Posted by Yohan Park
Yohan Park
7,148 Points

why initialize $output with "" ?

Just curious. For both render methods we initialize the $output with "". I know this is probably best practices but what's the specific reason?

//why
$output = "";
$output .= $recipe->getTitle() . " by " . $recipe->getSource();
//instead of
$output = $recipe->getTitle() . " by " . $recipe->getSource();
Dave StSomeWhere
Dave StSomeWhere
19,822 Points
Dave StSomeWhere
Dave StSomeWhere
19,822 Points

There's probably many reasons. For me, I see it as modular/flexible design. Your //instead of example is a one trick pony. The //why example can have something besides just an empty value when executed and the concatenated process just adds something additional to the end. Also, something else can be added with or without the title and source. Just my take :smile:

Yohan Park
Yohan Park
7,148 Points
Yohan Park
Yohan Park
7,148 Points

Thanks, Dave! That's a reasonable answer.