What is a protected property in PHP?

A protected property in PHP is accessible within its own class and by inheriting classes. This visibility level offers a balance between hiding the property from the general public while still allowing subclasses to utilize or modify it.

When a property is declared as protected, it ensures that the property cannot be accessed directly from outside the class hierarchy, effectively preventing access from instances of the class or other unrelated classes. However, any class that extends the parent class (which contains the protected property) can access this property, facilitating a controlled form of inheritance.

This behavior supports encapsulation and the principles of object-oriented programming by allowing subclasses to build upon or customize the behavior of the parent class while safeguarding the property from being altered outside those designated contexts.