How to use __invoke() in PHP?

You might have seen __invoke() function in famous frameworks or third-party libraries and wondering what this function does, you are in the right place.

The __invoke() magic method triggered when the object is being called as a function. The method can accept any number of parameters and is able to return mixed data types.

To get triggered this method a Class must contain __invoke() method among other functions.

For example

<?php

class User
{
 
  public function printName($name) {
      return $name;
  }

  public function __invoke($name, $age)
  {
    echo $name . ', ' . $age;
  }
}

So the following code will trigger the __invoke() method and print the values accordingly.

$user = new User;

$user('John', 20); // Outputs John, 20

Another key point is, we can get trigger the __invoke() method using the call_user_func(),.

An example would be as follows

$user = new User();

call_user_func($user, 'John', 20); // outputs: John, 20