Question

I am trying to access/change the properties of a class’ Parent through Reflection.

If I run ReflectionClass::getProperties() on the child, does it also return any properties that the Parent has as well?

If it doesn’t, is there any way to access the parent properties using Reflection?

Answer 1

I worked up this quick test. It looks like private properties of the parent are hidden when you get the child classes’s properties. However, if you invoke getParentClass() then getProperties() you will have the missing set of private props.

<?php
class Ford { 
  private $model;
  protected $foo;
  public $bar;
}

class Car extends Ford {
  private $year;
}

$class = new ReflectionClass('Car');
var_dump($class->getProperties()); // First chunk of output
var_dump($class->getParentClass()->getProperties()); // Second chunk

Output (notice the private prop Ford::model is missing):

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  &object(ReflectionProperty)#2 (2) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(4) "year"
    ["class"]=>
    string(3) "Car"
  }
  [1]=>
  &object(ReflectionProperty)#3 (2) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(3) "foo"
    ["class"]=>
    string(4) "Ford"
  }
  [2]=>
  &object(ReflectionProperty)#4 (2) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(3) "bar"
    ["class"]=>
    string(4) "Ford"
  }
}

Second Chunk (contains all the properties of the Ford class):

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  &object(ReflectionProperty)#3 (2) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(5) "model"
    ["class"]=>
    string(4) "Ford"
  }
  [1]=>
  &object(ReflectionProperty)#2 (2) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(3) "foo"
    ["class"]=>
    string(4) "Ford"
  }
  [2]=>
  &object(ReflectionProperty)#5 (2) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(3) "bar"
    ["class"]=>
    string(4) "Ford"
  }
}