Reference — What does this symbol mean in PHP?

In PHP, $this is a special variable that refers to the current object. It can be used inside any object method when you want to access the current object's properties or methods.

For example, let's say you have a class called User with a property called name and a method called getName. You could use $this to access the name property and return it from the getName method like this:

<?php

class User
{
    public $name;

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }
}

Watch a course Learn object oriented PHP

You can then create an instance of the User class and use the getName method to retrieve the value of the name property:

<?php

class User
{
    public $name;

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }
}

$user = new User();
$user->name = 'John';
echo $user->getName(); // Outputs 'John'

Note that $this can only be used inside object methods, and it cannot be used in functions or class constants.