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Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 10:38:46 -0400
Message-ID: <CAL+t6cFrOijwpencQYooaqrYWmVPOm5GshxhJi7+RpvcVx4N2g@mail.gmail.com>
To: Rasmus Schultz <rasmus@mindplay.dk>
Cc: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>, 
	Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=089e01634fda4e774f04dba913d5
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] property de-referencing
From: theanomaly.is@gmail.com (Sherif Ramadan)

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On May 1, 2013 8:35 AM, "Rasmus Schultz" <rasmus@mindplay.dk> wrote:
>
> >
> > This is a fringe feature, as evidenced by the fact that you
> > are having a hard time convincing people that it is needed
>
>
> As with anything that isn't already established and well-known, it's hard

This is like building something and then going out to find a problem that
it will hopefully solve.

> to convince anyone they need anything they don't understand - I think the

Perhaps the reason you're having trouble convincing anyone that they need
it is simply because they don't need it? Things I need that solve real
world problems for me are pretty obvious to me. I'm sure the solution
wasn't always obvious but the problem definitely was.

> barrier here is me having difficulty explaining a new idea/concept. That
> doesn't make it a fringe feature - I have already demonstrated by example
> how this would be useful in practically every mainstream framework.
>
> Properties simply don't carry
> > this information with them so a lot of things would have to change
> > internally for this to ever work
>
>
> I'm not sure what information you're referring to?
>
> Let's say for the sake of argument, I'm going to use a pre-processor to
> transform the following code:
>
> $prop = ^$user->name;
>
> var_dump($nameprop->getValue()); // => 'Rasmus'
>
> $nameprop->setValue('Bob');
>
> var_dump($nameprop->getValue()); // => 'Bob'
>
> The pre-processor output might look like this:
>
> $nameprop = new PropertyReference($user, 'name'); // $prop = ^$user->name;
>
> var_dump($nameprop->getValue()); // => 'Rasmus'
>
> $nameprop->setValue('Bob');
>
> var_dump($nameprop->getValue()); // => 'Bob'
>
> Only the first line changes - the rest behaves and runs like any normal
PHP
> code.
>
> And the PropertyReference class could be implemented in plain PHP like
this:
>
> class PropertyReference
> {
>     private $_object;
>
>     private $_propertyName;
>
>     public function __construct($object, $propertyName)
>     {
>         $this->_object = $object;
>         $this->_propertyName = $propertyName;
>     }
>
>     public function getObject()
>     {
>         return $this->_object;
>     }
>
>     public function getPropertyName()
>     {
>         return $this->_propertyName;
>     }
>
>     public function getValue()
>     {
>         return $this->_object->{$this->_propertyName};
>     }
>
>     public function setValue($value)
>     {
>         $this->_object->{$this->_propertyName} = $value;
>     }
>
>     // and maybe:
>
>     public function getReflection()
>     {
>         return new ReflectionObject($this->_object);
>     }
> }
>
>
> You can see the above example running in a sandbox here:
>
>
http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/87c57301e0f6babb51026192bd3db84ddaf84c83
>
> Someone said they didn't think this would work for accessors, so I'm
> including a running sample with a User model that uses accessors:
>
>
http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/f2922b3a5dc0e12bf1e6fcacd8e73ff80717f3cb
>
> Note that the dynamic User::$name property in this example is properly
> documented and will reflect in an IDE.
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
wrote:
>
> > On 04/30/2013 05:17 PM, Rasmus Schultz wrote:
> >
> > > If the asterisk (or some other character) offers and easier
> > > implementation path, whatever.
> >
> > It doesn't. This is a fringe feature, as evidenced by the fact that you
> > are having a hard time convincing people that it is needed, and thus
> > shouldn't overload an existing operator. Visually it would be confusing
> > to take any well-known operator and give it a different obscure meaning.
> > But yes, syntax-wise ^ could be made to work, the implementation problem
> > I referred to is lower-level than that. Properties simply don't carry
> > this information with them so a lot of things would have to change
> > internally for this to ever work and if a clean implementation could be
> > found, like I said, adding it to the reflection functions is the proper
> > place.
> >
> > -Rasmus
> >

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