PHP introduced namespaces as part of the 5.3 release. It provided a way to group related classes, interfaces, functions, and constants, thus making our code base more organized and readable. However, dealing with modern libraries usually involves a lot of verbosity in terms of numerous use statements used to import classes from various namespaces, as shown in the following example:
use Magento\Backend\Block\Widget\Grid; use Magento\Backend\Block\Widget\Grid\Column; use Magento\Backend\Block\Widget\Grid\Extended;
To address this verbosity, the PHP 7 release introduced the group use declarations, allowing the following syntax:
use Magento\Backend\Block\Widget\Grid;
use Magento\Backend\Block\Widget\Grid\{
Column,
Extended
};Here, we condensed Column and Extend under a single declaration. We can further condense this using the following compound namespaces:
use Magento\Backend\Block\Widget\{
Grid
Grid\Column,
Grid\Extended
};The group use declarations act as a shorthand to condense use declarations, making it slightly easier to import classes, constants, and functions in a concise way. While their benefits seem somewhat marginal, their use is completely optional.