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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Property Accessors for 5.5
From: cpriest@zerocue.com (Clint Priest)


On 1/23/2013 1:00 PM, Marco Pivetta wrote:
>
> Actually, having the properties shown even if virtual allows us to 
> access them in a reflection-ish manner without doing dangerous 
> assumptions like "does the setter/getter exist"?
>
> The fact that the property is virtual is very useful, even though in 
> dumping it doesn't show any value. I don't see any radical difference 
> in debugging or ease of use in general.
> Actually, doing the same things with magic getters/setters would 
> probably imply having to think more about the trace we want to follow 
> when analyzing our bugs. It is just a matter of being aware of new 
> setter/getters (that are anyway in our trace).
>

If you stop and think about it, the current accessors are identical in 
functionality to defining a private variable for every __get().

So these two sets of code work and act identically:

class Foo {
   private $bar;
   public __get($name) {
     if($name == 'bar')
       return $this->bar;
   }
   public __set($name, $value) {
     if($name == 'bar')
       $this->bar = $value;
   }
   public __isset($name) {
     if($name == 'bar')
       return isset($this->bar);
   }
   public __unset($name) {
     if($name == 'bar')
       unset($this->bar);
   }
}

-- OR --

class Foo {
   public $bar { get; set; }
}

Except in the first case, you have to look at four sections of code to 
find "everything that applies to bar" and if you add 5 or 6 more dynamic 
properties, you have 4 huge switch statements, again with all the code 
split up everywhere.

With Property Accessors, it's all right there.  This of course is a very 
simple case, if you actually USE the dynamic nature of __get(), etc then 
you've got a ton more code.

-- 
-Clint