## 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 will perform a shallow copy of all of the object's properties. Any properties that are references to other variables will remain references.

__clone ( void ) : void

Once the cloning is complete, 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 #1 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
            )

    )

PHP 7.0.0 introduced the possibility to access a member of a freshly cloned object in a single expression:

Example #2 Access member of freshly cloned object

`<?php
$dateTime = new DateTime();
echo (clone $dateTime)->format('Y');
?>`

The above example will output something similar to:

    2016