Question

I coded a php class to represent a query-result. On an incoming query I cast it to an array, convert it to JSON (per json_encode) and return it to the user.

Now I want to define a class intern “debug” attribute, which souldn’t be in the output – how can I hide attributes on casting a class to an array?

Answer 1

Declare it private or protected.

class Foo
{
   public $bar = 'bar';   
   private $baz = 'baz';
   protected $quux = 'quux';
}

$f = new Foo();

echo json_encode($f);

Result:

{"bar":"bar"}

NB. Requires PHP 5, see Visibility in the PHP manual.