Question

Can I do this, maybe using ReflectionClass ?

myprintr($some_object);


function myprintr(){
  foreach(func_get_args() as $key => $arg){

    // here I want to get the name of the passed variable, "some_object"
    // $key seems to be numeric...
  }


}

Answer 1

If the user passes an object to myprintr(), then you can use

if (is_object($arg)) {
    $className = get_class($arg);
}

to get the name of the object type that has been passed, which you can then feed to reflection

but the reflection constructor will accept either a class name or an object as an argument, so you don’t even need the class name to instantiate a reflection class

EDIT

Just for the sake of playing a bit with this concept (and not creating any dependency on globals), or on whether the arguments are variables, values returned from functions, strings, etc:

class Test{};

function myTest() {
    $some_object = new Test();
    myprintr($some_object);
}

function myprintr(){
    $callStack = debug_backtrace();
    $calledAt = $callStack[0];

    $callingFile = file($calledAt['file'],FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES);
    $callingLine = $callingFile[$calledAt['line']-1];
    $callingLine = substr($callingLine,strpos($callingLine,__METHOD__));
    $calledWithArgNames = trim(substr($matches[0],1,-1));

    var_dump($calledWithArgNames);

    $args = func_get_args();

    foreach($args as $arg) {
        var_dump($arg);
    }
}

myTest();

$some_object = new Test();
$some_other_object = &$some_object;

$t = 2;
$gazebo = "summer house";
$visigoth = pi() / 2; myprintr($some_other_object,pi(), atan2(pi(),$t), $visigoth, "Hello $t World", $gazebo); $t = log($t/$visigoth);

This retrieves all the arguments passed by the calling function in $calledWithArgNames, so for the first call you have:

'$some_object'

and for the second call:

'$some_other_object,pi(), atan2(pi(),$t), $visigoth, "Hello $t World", $gazebo'

This still requires splitting down into the individual arguments (a preg_split on commas, except where they’re inside braces), but is certainly a step closer to what you’re actually asking for.