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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Propety Accessors v1.1
From: davidkmuir@gmail.com (David Muir)

On 09/10/12 19:20, Jazzer Dane wrote:
> - "If we ever get return type hinting/checks then we needn't consider how
> the syntax has to look" From what I know, this isn't planned for PHP 5.5
> and any proposals for it have been largely ignored. Return type hinting
> won't help when setting either, although it would help with getting. All
> that being said, type hinting aside, the syntax I proposed is, in my
> opinion, the most consistent out of any other proposal thus far (arguably
> aside from yours, I'll go over that momentarily).

Excellent point. Return type-hints only affect the getter, and even then 
it could be a moot point if the property itself could be bound to a 
particular type. It would actually be a much cleaner solution, and 
wouldn't require any superfluous parens in the declaration:

class MyClass{

     public SomeClass $property {
         get {...}
         set {...}
     }
}

$foo = new MyClass;
$bar = new SomeClass;
$foo->property = $bar; //ok
$foo->property = new StdClass; //type mismatch

Heck, half the time setters and getters are implemented specifically for 
this purpose. If the property itself could be typed, then 90% of the 
time we wouldn't even need to specify get/set. Just give the property a 
type and be done with it.

That said, it wouldn't help for scalar values, and that leads to a 
problem with the current syntax (AFAICS). You can't specify the initial 
value for a property:

eg:
class MyClass{

     public $property = 5    //?can we do this?
     {
         set($value){
             if(!is_int($value)){
                 throw new InvalidArgumentException('value of wrong type');
             }
             $this->__property = $value;
         }
     }
}

Or would that have to happen in the constructor?

class MyClass{

     public $property
     {
         set($value){
             if(!is_int($value)){
                 throw new InvalidArgumentException('value of wrong type');
             }
             $this->__property = $value;
         }
     }

     public function __construct(){
         $this->property = 5;
     }
}


Cheers,
David