I'm Mészáros Róbert – a full-stack developer who enjoys working in cross-functional teams the most.

There is the ... operator in PHP (and other languages) known as the splat operator, which, when combined with type hinting, proves to be extremely useful for accepting any number of "things."

However, what if you want to ensure at least one "thing"?

If you do the checking "manually", that's totally fine. Depending on your use case, you can deal with no "things" or require it.

class Foo
{
    private array $conditions = [];
    
    public function __construct(Condition ...$conditions)
    {
        // Let's make damn sure there's a condition!
        assert(!empty($conditions));
        
        $this->conditions = $conditions;    
    }
    
    public function __invoke(): array
    {
        // Or be less strict about it and handle it as a possible state
        if (empty($this->conditions)) {
            return [];
        }
        
        // ...
    }
}
class Foo
{
    private array $conditions = [];
    
    public function __construct(Condition ...$conditions)
    {
        // Let's make damn sure there's a condition!
        assert(!empty($conditions));
        
        $this->conditions = $conditions;    
    }
    
    public function __invoke(): array
    {
        // Or be less strict about it and handle it as a possible state
        if (empty($this->conditions)) {
            return [];
        }
        
        // ...
    }
}

The alternative solution looks like this:

class Foo
{
    private array $conditions = [];
    
    public function __construct(Condition $firstCondition, Condition ...$conditions)
    {   
        $this->conditions = [$firstCondition, ...$conditions];   
    }
    
    public function __invoke(): array
    {
        // No checks needed
        
        // ...
    }
}
class Foo
{
    private array $conditions = [];
    
    public function __construct(Condition $firstCondition, Condition ...$conditions)
    {   
        $this->conditions = [$firstCondition, ...$conditions];   
    }
    
    public function __invoke(): array
    {
        // No checks needed
        
        // ...
    }
}

I like the expressivity of this solution, and it's also more compact.

Since the splat operator has been around for ages, I can even imagine that this "pattern", "trick" is called somehow.

Now, it's just a matter of remembering and applying. That's the "easy" part.