Comments on: Dynamically Add Functions to PHP Classes

By: Katsuke

Katsuke — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:42:17 +0000

Excellent article, thanks a lot ^&^

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:21:45 +0000

I wouldn’t say you’re dampening the spirit… if the decorator pattern works better, it’s certainly a more elegant solution to the problem than this one.

I think I’ve actually looked at it before, and can’t quite remember if it suited the needs of the problem I was working on that inspired me to write the article tho. Here’s an article I found on the subject if anyone’s interested: http://tinyurl.com/5etz97

By: Les

Les — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:46:30 +0000

Nice technique I must say however not wanting to dampen everyone’s spirit on the subject, I am left with the feeling the same pretty much could be accomplished, more easily I might add, using a Decorator.

In this case, there is no desire to alter the public API so Decorator would be my first choice.

By: ap

ap — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:37:51 +0000

Here's an interesting thread that eventually leads to this. Perhaps it is of interest to you.

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:39:08 +0000

Ooops, the array_unshift line in my example is cruft.

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:33:56 +0000

Isn’t call_user_func_array deprecated?

I took a crack at the idea… I ended up going with a parent class for the Extend-able stuff and the Extensions, using magic functions a lot, so it’s probably slow, but I worked around the need to have the Extend-able class add it’s own extensions. Anyway – read it and weep:

http://pastebin.com/f14aeced8

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:29:09 +0000

I was thinking it was similar to an Observer pattern, but Decorator might be closer. I should look them both up again and refresh myself…

If you look into some of the recent PHP5 specific frameworks like Kohana, they’re all using magic functions now, even for getters and setters in their Object relational stuff.

Anyway, congratulations, my young friend. I bought you a cup of coffee.

By: Martin Pietschmann

Martin Pietschmann — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:23:32 +0000

@Ian
Yes, the magic functions might be very slow, but they are necessary to implement this kind of multiple inheritance

Here is my new version: http://pastebin.com/f29f852ad
Demo: http://tinyurl.com/8ml54k
Demo code: http://pastebin.com/f27b70275

Now you have only one base class, so you can build a chain of imports.
But now you can have the diamond problem:
‘boat’ imports ‘car’
‘automobile’ imports ‘car’
‘amphibian vehicle’ imports ‘automobile’ and ‘boat’

Therefor I expanded the import function as well as the __get and __set function to redirect all access to the lastly imported ‘car’ object. This is like virtual inheritance in c++.

Unfortunately there are still problems with dublicated functionnames.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:21:34 +0000

@Martin,
I do like it, but it looks like a combination of my example and the example posted by @crem0r. However, the spin you’ve put on it is quite nice. I personally wouldn’t use it because I don’t like using magic functions any more than I absolutely have to (as they’re usually very slow and unoptomized). However, all that being said, you still did a fantastic nice job!

By: Martin Pietschmann

Martin Pietschmann — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:18:56 +0000

Hello, I had just the same idea a few days ago
So here is my version: http://pastebin.com/fd1812de

Now attributes of imported classes are also accessible in the base class and the imported classes have access to the public AND protected vars of the base class.
Within imported classes your have also access to functions and vars of other imported classes.
You can now simply use $this instead of $this->that inside imported classes to access functions and vars of the base class or other imported classes.

I hope you like it.