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To: internals@lists.php.net,Julien Pauli <jpauli@php.net>,
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Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 14:54:50 -0500
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Subject: Re: Exposing object handles to userland
From: me@stephencoakley.com (Stephen Coakley)

On 07/31/2015 09:23 AM, Julien Pauli wrote:
> Hi people.
>
> I've been pinged many times to add a new spl_object_id() function to PHP,
> that would return the internal object handle of an object.
>
> Today, spl_object_hash() partially allows that, but adds many randomness to
> the result, which is not very cool to use later  (why does it even add
> randomness ?).
>
> There has been topics about this subject.
> For example, at http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=141814350920452&w=2
>
>
> Beeing able to get the object handle back in PHP userland would ease many
> tools, mainly debug-oriented tools.
> I know PHPUnit, Symfony and many big projects today make use of
> spl_object_hash() to identify objects.
>
> I also know people that print_r($an_object) and parse the output just to
> extract the object handle from there... Crazy isn't it ?
> Why couldn't we help those people by simply adding a new function that does
> the job ?
>
> Thoughts ?
>
>
> Julien.Pauli
>

I can think of several use cases why this might be useful, and not just 
for debugging-related code. It could be used for indexing some sort of 
complex object storage data structure (if you can't/won't use 
SplObjectStorage). I can think of a few libraries that us 
spl_object_hash() to do the same thing but doesn't work well in 
conjunction with forking (probably due to the randomness factor).

+1

-- 
Stephen Coakley