Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:94386
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 74.125.82.49 as permitted sender)
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CAFMT4Noe07E9--sasW-Fiw5B1hFFZbXDG2_wumkfZCbqM9wh7A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAF+90c9RCfLdFGgLVXtc3iPy-LcPK3cfKqHNz-7Mm+QygER1Tg@mail.gmail.com>
 <1f39f97a-6aaf-8550-9f82-a7e80465f903@telia.com>
 <CAFMT4NrEPA31tL-vuyOHSO6=w+HjzGD6e-WUwyeROP2PKZ82Qw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <be735c2f-ffa7-f430-3acf-09c5d13062fa@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2016 15:28:08 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/45.1.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAFMT4NrEPA31tL-vuyOHSO6=w+HjzGD6e-WUwyeROP2PKZ82Qw@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC][Vote] ReflectionType Improvements
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 05/07/2016 14:21, Levi Morrison wrote:
>     if ($type instanceof ReflectionClassType) {
>         $r = $type->getClass();
>     }

> The (currently) correct code would be:
>
>     if (class_exists($type->getName()) || interface_exists($type->getName())) {
>         $r = new ReflectionClass($type->getName());
>     }

This seems to be combining two checks into one:

- is this a "simple / builtin type" or a "class / interface type"?
- is the class / interface referenced currently defined or autoloadable?

The first question can be answered with the existing 
ReflectionType::isBuiltin() method. The fact that the second is 
currently difficult to answer doesn't seem to have anything to do with 
reflecting type hints.

It seems like if there was a use case for "is this type hint a currently 
defined or autoloadable class / interface?" it would ideally be written 
something like this:

if ( ! $type->isBuiltin() && object_type_exists($type->getName()) )

The term "object type" being bikesheddable as a way of encompassing your 
hypothetical enums or other future "class-like" types. Of course, the 
fact that "class_exists" and "ReflectionClass" use different definitions 
of "class" already is somewhat awkward...


Or if the aim is to simplify the reflection usage, why require the if 
statement at all:

try {
     $r = $type->getReflectionClass();
} catch ( ReflectionException $e ) {
     // type is builtin or refers to an undefined class
}

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]