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Date: Wed, 13 May 2015 11:44:32 -0600
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To: Guido Contreras Woda <guiwoda@gmail.com>
Cc: "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal: interfaces for object to scalar type casting
From: derokorian@gmail.com (Ryan Pallas)

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On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Guido Contreras Woda <guiwoda@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello everyone!
>
> Multiple frameworks and libraries define interfaces or objects that wrap
> around some scalar value and add behavior, the most common case being
> arrays and Collection / Hash[Set|List] objects. Although this objects
> benefit from the possibility of having behavior themselves, sometimes the
> implementation is outside our project scope (an external dependency) and
> interaction between this object and other blocks of code that expect scalar
> types usually needs to be controlled by the user, which adds the necessity
> for adapters or some sort of mediator.
>
> Now that we have the ability to hint return types, a common interface could
> be built that, given an object that implements it, lets userland code use
> this object as if it were the scalar type it is wrapping. Unboxing the
> object is pretty easy, and I wouldn't go as far as proposing interfaces for
> rebuilding the object itself (not now, at least).
>
> So, what do you think of a set of interfaces that allow userland objects to
> be used as scalar types?
>
> Some simple examples in PHP here:
> https://gist.github.com/guiwoda/5d16c8fb97d29e476d20
>
>
I like the idea of supporting more __toType methods than just __toString.
It would certainly make certain things in life a bit easier to manage. For
now, I know I've abused __toString() and done things like (int)(string)$obj
to get the Int value out of it.


>
> Cheers!
>

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