Question

Basically my setup is that I have a lot of objects that I want to create. What type of object it will become is dependent on one variable, which is the type. So originally I would have to do many if statements, so to shorten it I created an array, but I am running in to the problem of being able to create the actual object through the array.

Here is what I had originally:

if($object->type = 'text')
{
    $object_new = new Text();
} elseif($object->type = 'image') {
    $object_new = new Image();
} ....

But what I wanted to do is:

$all_objects = array('text'=> new Text(), 'image' => new Image(), ...);
$object_new = $all_objects($object->type);

Which would shorten my code by a lot as well as make it more efficient.

Answer 1

If there is no further dependencies to these object, you can simply do

$className = $object->type;
$instance = new $className;

If you need more sophisticated creation logic, you can put the creation code in Lambdas and call those then, e.g.

$allTypes = array(
    'text' => function($string) { return new Text($string); },
    'Image' => function($path) { return new Image($path); }
);
$instance = call_user_func_array($allTypes[$object->type], array($argument1));

Or you create a Factory object and put a switch/case into it:

class Factory
{
    public function create($type)
    {
        switch ($type)
        {
            case 'text':
                return new Text;
            case 'image':
                return Image($this->create('foo'));
            case 'foo':
                return new Foo;
            default:
                throw new Exception('No clue what to create');
        }
    }
}

Also checkout Is there a call_user_func() equivalent to create a new class instance?