In what scenarios would using a Proxy Pattern in PHP be considered beneficial or detrimental?

Using a Proxy Pattern in PHP can be beneficial when you want to control access to an object, add additional functionality before or after the original object's methods are called, or delay the creation and initialization of the object until it is actually needed. However, using a Proxy Pattern can also introduce overhead and complexity to the codebase if not implemented carefully. 

interface Image
{
    public function display(): void;
}

class RealImage implements Image
{
    private $filename;

    public function __construct(string $filename)
    {
        $this->filename = $filename;
        $this->loadImageFromDisk();
    }

    public function display(): void
    {
        echo "Displaying image: " . $this->filename . PHP_EOL;
    }

    private function loadImageFromDisk(): void
    {
        echo "Loading image from disk: " . $this->filename . PHP_EOL;
    }
}

class ProxyImage implements Image
{
    private $realImage;
    private $filename;

    public function __construct(string $filename)
    {
        $this->filename = $filename;
    }

    public function display(): void
    {
        if ($this->realImage === null) {
            $this->realImage = new RealImage($this->filename);
        }

        $this->realImage->display();
    }
}

// Usage
$image = new ProxyImage("test.jpg");

// Image is not loaded until display is called
$image->display();

Keywords

Proxy Pattern PHP design pattern object-oriented programming performance.

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