Question

From the code below, does anyone know of a way to put the value of $parent->foo and $parent->foo1 into $child->bar and $child->bar1, respectively, from a method defined in B?

I can copy the values with $child->bar=$parent->foo and $child->bar1=$parent->foo1 outside the objects but it feels like there could be a simple method in the child (or even the parent for that matter) for this situation. My parent object is getting the values of the foo’s from html input boxes.

Class A 
{
    public $foo="someText";
    public $foo1="someOtherText";
}

Class B extends A 
{
    public $bar;
    public $bar1;

    //theoretical function Id like to use
    public copyParentcontents() 
    {

    }
}

$parent = new A();
$child = new B();

Answer 1

Class B extends A {

public $bar;
public $bar1;

//theoretical function Id like to use
public copyParentcontents($parent) {
    if(get_class($parent)=="A"){
        $this->$bar = $parent->foo;
        $this->$bar1 = $parent->foo1;
    }else{
    //You could throw an exception here
    }
}

}

and then:

$parent= new A; $child= new B; 
$parent->foo = "modifiedText";
$child->copyParentcontents($parent);

Perhaps this is what you need?