Why Colon After PHP Function(): Colon after method :

It’s easy to understand, here is the simple example for Why Colon After PHP Function(): Colon after method : ? it’s the new features.

In PHP, the : symbol is used to indicate the start of a block of code that defines a specific type of construct, such as a function, a class, or a control structure (like if, for, while, etc.).

In the case of the multiply() method in Laravel or PHP, the : symbol is used to indicate the return type of the method. In PHP 7 and later, you can specify the return type of a function or method by adding a colon followed by the type name after the argument list.

For example, the following code defines a function multiply that takes two integer arguments and returns an integer:

function multiply(int $a, int $b): int {
    return $a * $b;
}

In this case, the : int specifies that the function should return an integer value.

The use of return types can help improve the clarity and maintainability of your code, as it makes it easier for other developers (and the PHP engine itself) to understand what kind of value a function or method is expected to return. It can also help catch errors at compile time, as the PHP engine will generate an error if the return value of a function does not match the specified return type.

public function shouldRender(): bool
{
    return Str::length($this->message) > 0;
}

shouldRender() method returns a boolean value (true or false) depending on whether the length of the message property of the class is greater than 0.

The method declaration public function shouldRender(): bool indicates that the return type of the method is bool, which means that the method is expected to return a boolean value. The method body then performs a check on the length of the message property using the Str::length method, which is a utility method provided by Laravel for working with string values.

If the length of the message property is greater than 0, the method returns true. Otherwise, it returns false.

So shouldRender() method returns true if the message is not empty and false if the message is empty.

why Colon After PHP Function(): Colon after method : ?

mean what do you want to return from method? that you can deside just adding colon :.

: bool function return true or false

:int function return int etc

Thanks.