Question

I am writing a Proxy class in PHP.

To do so, I am using magic method to catch calls/get/set… to the proxied instance, and forward them to that instance.

However, I am unsure what to do in this situation:

class Proxy {

    // Proxied object
    private $instance;

    // ...

    function __destruct() {
        // unset($this->instance); ?
        // $this->instance->__destruct(); ?
        // nothing ?
    }

}

Should I (can I) call the destructor explicitly? Or should I just unset the object, knowing it won’t really destroy it for sure (at least, immediately)?

Or should I just do nothing and wait for the garbage collector to destroy the instance?

Answer 1

Don’t do anything. It’ll be taken care of by the garbage collector, probably at around the same time as the proxy.