Question

I have a class called contact:

class contacts
{
    public $ID;
    public $Name;
    public $Email;
    public $PhoneNumber;
    public $CellPhone;
    public $IsDealer;
    public $DealerID;
}

At some point in my code I would like to point to a property within that class and return the name of the property.

<input type="text" 
   id="<?php key($objContact->Name)" ?>"
   name="<?php key($objContact->Name)" ?>"
   value="<?php $_POST['contact'.key($objContact->Name)]" />

My issue being that the key() function only deals with arrays or objects. $objContact->Name itself does not meet these requirements. I know it would be just as simple to type the name itself out into the ID and NAME fields but this is for other code verification uses. Imagine the processor page:

$objContact = new contact();

$objContact->Email = $_POST[$objContact->Email->**GetSinglePropertyName()**];

$objContact->PhoneNumber = $_POST[$objContact->PhoneNumber->**GetSinglePropertyName()**];

This allows me to turn on STRICT and ensure that as I’m writing I’m not creating any fat finger errors along the way that are going to have me denting my head anymore than it presently exist.

UPDATE WITH ANSWER
Answer provided by: linepogl

Now I’ve taken linepogl’s idea and extended is some so it can work very easily with my existing code base. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

class baseData {
    public $meta;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->meta = new Meta($this);
    }
}

class Meta {
  public function __construct($obj) {
    $a = get_object_vars($obj);
    foreach ($a as $key => $value){
      $this->$key = $key;   
    }
  }
}

class contacts extends baseData
{
    public $ID;
    public $Name;
    public $Email;
    public $PhoneNumber;
    public $CellPhone;
    public $IsDealer;
    public $DealerID;
}

Which means I can now call the following code with the desired results:

$objContact = new contacts();
echo($objContact->meta->Email);

Answer 1

So, you want when you type $objContact->Name to take as an answer not the evaluation of this expression but its meta data, which in this case is a ReflectionProperty object.

What you want is a feature that is called metaprogramming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaprogramming ). Of course php does not support that but there are other languages that do, such as Lisp etc. Rumors say that C# 5.0 will introduce such features.

You can achieve a similar effect by using Reflection ( http://php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php ). You can get the meta-object of $objContact (ReflectionClass) and iterate over the properties.

So, there is no way to identify a specific property with an identifier. The only way to do is is with a string of its name.

EDIT:

Yet, there a way to simulate it! Write a class like this:

class Meta {
  public function __construct($obj) {
    $a = get_object_vars($obj);
    foreach ($a as $key => $value){
      $this->$key = $key;   // <-- this can be enhanced to store an
                            //     object with a whole bunch of meta-data, 
                            //     but you get the idea.
    }
  }
}

So now you will be able to do this:

$meta = new Meta($objContact);

echo $meta->Name;   // <-- with will return 'Name'!