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Organization: Calligram Ltd
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Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:19:55 +0100
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Message-ID: <200504181319.56004.duncan@calligram.co.uk>
Subject: Attributes support proposal
From: duncan@calligram.co.uk (Duncan McIntyre)

Hello,

I am playing around with an extension to the Zend Engine 2 to allow class 
properties and methods to be tagged with attributes. These attributes would 
then be accessible through the Reflection classes:

!---------- example -------------!
class Storable {

	[serializer:toString; persistent:true; ] public $date;

	function __construct() {
		$this->date = new CDate();
	}
	...
	...
}

$store = new Storable();

$rf = new ReflectionProperty("Storable","date");
$s = $rf->getAttributeValue("serializer");
if(!is_null($s) && method_exists($store, $s)) {
	$v = $store->date->$s();
} else {
	$v = $store->date;
}

echo "the value of the date property is $v";

!------------- /example -------------!

I would find the ability to set attributes extremely useful in building 
frameworks a la Ruby On Rails. 

Anyone think this is a good idea?

Duncan