Enums in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Working with Enums in PHP

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple system to manage user roles in a web application. Each user can have a role like Admin, Editor, or Viewer. Using enums helps keep these roles organized and easy to manage.

🎯 Goal: Create a PHP enum called UserRole with specific roles, then write code to check a user's role and print a message.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a backed enum called UserRole with string values for Admin, Editor, and Viewer.

Create a variable called currentUserRole and assign it the UserRole::Editor value.

Write a match expression to print a message based on the currentUserRole.

Print the message to the screen.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Enums help organize fixed sets of related values like user roles, making code easier to read and less error-prone.

💼 Career

Understanding enums is useful for backend PHP development, especially in frameworks and applications that manage user permissions or states.

1

Create the UserRole enum

Create a backed enum called UserRole with string values: Admin = 'admin', Editor = 'editor', and Viewer = 'viewer'.

PHP

<?php

enum UserRole: string
{
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use the enum keyword followed by the name UserRole and specify : string for backed enum. Then add case lines for each role.

2

Assign a role to currentUserRole

Create a variable called currentUserRole and assign it the value UserRole::Editor.

PHP

<?php

enum UserRole: string
{
    case Admin = 'admin';
    case Editor = 'editor';
    case Viewer = 'viewer';
}

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the enum name UserRole followed by ::Editor to assign the enum value to the variable.

3

Use match to create a message based on the role

Write a match expression that uses $currentUserRole to set a variable $message with these exact strings:
UserRole::Admin => "You have full access.",
UserRole::Editor => "You can edit content.",
UserRole::Viewer => "You can view content."

PHP

<?php

enum UserRole: string
{
    case Admin = 'admin';
    case Editor = 'editor';
    case Viewer = 'viewer';
}

$currentUserRole = UserRole::Editor;

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the match expression with $currentUserRole and assign the result to $message. Match each enum case to the exact string.

4

Print the message

Write a print statement to display the $message variable.

PHP

 "You have full access.",
    UserRole::Editor => "You can edit content.",
    UserRole::Viewer => "You can view content.",
};

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print($message); to show the message on the screen.