What Do Two Colons Mean in PHP

What do two colons mean in PHP?

That's (generally) for accessing a static method or property in a class. It's called the scope resolution operator, or Paamayim Nekudotayim (which leads to some amazingly confusing error messages!). See http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.paamayim-nekudotayim.php.

What does double colon in laravel means

:: Scope Resolution Operator

:: is called as scope resolution operator (AKA Paamayim Nekudotayim). This operator is used to refer the scope of some block or program context like classes, objects, namespace and etc. For this reference an identifier is used with this operator to access or reproduce the code inside that scope.

Reference

Auth::guard($guard)->guest() : In this line you are using the guard() method of static class Auth. To use the function of a static class we use :: Scope Resolution Operator.

Difference between double colon and arrow operators in PHP?

:: is for static elements while -> is for instance elements.

For example:

class Example {
  public static function hello(){
    echo 'hello';
  }
  public function world(){
    echo 'world';
  }
}

// Static method, can be called from the class name
Example::hello();

// Instance method, can only be called from an instance of the class
$obj = new Example();
$obj->world();

More about the static concept

What is Ruby's double-colon `::`?

:: is basically a namespace resolution operator. It allows you to access items in modules, or class-level items in classes. For example, say you had this setup:

module SomeModule
    module InnerModule
        class MyClass
            CONSTANT = 4
        end
    end
end

You could access CONSTANT from outside the module as SomeModule::InnerModule::MyClass::CONSTANT.

It doesn't affect instance methods defined on a class, since you access those with a different syntax (the dot .).

Relevant note: If you want to go back to the top-level namespace, do this: ::SomeModule – Benjamin Oakes

What does : mean in PHP?

It's called an Alternative Syntax For Control Structures. You should have an endwhile; somewhere after that. Basically, it allows you to omit braces {} from a while to make it look "prettier"...

As far as your edit, it's called the Ternary Operator (it's the third section). Basically it's an assignment shorthand.

$foo = $first ? $second : $third;

is the same as saying (Just shorter):

if ($first) {
    $foo = $second;
} else {
    $foo = $third;
}

PHP: How to create function which will be accessible with :: (double colon, scope resolution) in another classes

The double colon allows access to static function and constants in a class.

Change your class method to:

static function runTests() {
...

and then call it like this

DoSomethin::runTests();

String :: and __ the double colon and double underscore in PHP

:: = Scope resolution operator: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.paamayim-nekudotayim.php

The __-prefix is a convention surrounded by built-in magic: http://www.php.net/manual/en/userlandnaming.rules.php, never start a function or variable with this if you can avoid it.

The first is a token, the second a convention.

If you really want to know most tokens, see: http://www.php.net/manual/en/tokens.php
If you want to know more about naming conventions, see: http://www.php.net/manual/en/userlandnaming.php

When starting out with PHP it would hurt to read Zend coding conventions, although it's not a must and not the only way by a long shot: http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/coding-standard.html

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