Question

I am creating a __get() function for a class to control access to my private member variables. Do I need to design the function to handle all possible member value reads or can I not write it for members that are public? Also, I am assuming that classes that inherit this class will use my __get() function to access private members.

class ClassA{
  private $collection = array();
  public $value;

  function __get($item){
    return $collection[$item];
  }

Answer 1

No, you don’t.

class A {
   public $foo = 'bar';
   private $private = array();

   public function __get($key) {
      echo 'Called __get() at line #' ,__LINE__, ' with key {', $key ,'}',"\n";
      return $this->private[$key];
   }

   public function __set($key, $val) {
      $this->private[$key] = $val;
   }
}


$a = new A();

var_dump($a->foo);
$a->bar = 'baz';
var_dump($a->bar);

And yes, it will:

class B extends A { private $private = array(); }
$b = new B();
var_dump($b->bar);