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Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2021 18:28:34 +0100
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To: Marc Bennewitz <marc@mabe.berlin>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Alias stdClass to DynamicObject?
From: tekiela246@gmail.com (Kamil Tekiela)

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Hi Marc,

The name seems to be ok IMHO. Even though it is a class, the main use case
is to denote an object that was created dynamically rather than through an
instantiation of a class. And I know that a lot of usage comes from people
directly creating new instances of stdClass but if you do that then you can
use proper classes also (with Nikita's proposal to deprecate dynamic
properties one would have to use a class with defined properties to do the
same).
It's not unheard that a class has "object" in the name. e.g.
https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/api/javax/json/JsonObject.html or
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.json.jsonobject?view=dotnet-plat-ext-5.0
The name DynamicObject is also used in other languages.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.dynamic.dynamicobject?view=net-5.0
The word "Dynamic" semantically explains the purpose of the instance of
such class: it has no fixed structure.

We could call it Map or Dictionary, which would also be fitting, but in
doing so we are opening up the scope of this RFC. How much more
functionality does PHP need? What would be the goal of it? PHP has tons of
functions for working with arrays. If we introduce another type like Map
then it would be expected that a set of methods be added to it. This sounds
similar to scalar objects. And while it would be nice to have such kind of
functionality in PHP, it would also be a lot of work to implement it. If we
already have associative arrays, do we really need another structure to do
the same thing? I think it would be prudent to first understand why people
are using stdClass in the first place. From my experience, most of the time
people who work with stdClass don't expect it to have any methods. It's
just a container for data just like an array, but with a different syntax.
It's not much more different than an anonymous class.

The goal of Nikita's proposal is to retain the functionality of dynamically
assigning properties to an object after deprecating dynamic properties on
all other objects. The new class DynamicObject would be a special type of
class that would retain this functionality. Thus, the name fits perfectly.
A DynamicObject is a class whose properties can be created dynamically.

Regards,
Kamil

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