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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T05:13:33+00:00

I have a collection of PHP classes that can be instantiated traditionally using constructors.

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I have a collection of PHP classes that can be instantiated traditionally using constructors. Now I want to add the ability to instantiate these objects using YAML configuration files.

Here’s an example of a configuration file describing a web form:

title: Contact
fields:
    message:
        type: text
        required: true
    topic:
        type: dropdown
        options: ["HTML", "CSS", "PHP"]

This should result in a Form object with two corresponding Field objects. In other words, the configuration files sometimes describe objects that contain other objects.

I don’t want simply a mapping from YAML key/value pairs to PHP properties because I want to allow shorthand syntax in the configuration files. For instance, I want to abbreviate some property names and also be able to type something like default: today, where “today” is not interpreted as a string literal but rather transformed into the current timestamp.

Since many of the classes are subclasses, I’m looking for a solution that also lets me somehow “inherit” configuration logic from the superclass.

I want to avoid modifying the existing classes, but I am willing to do so if it allows for a simpler solution. On second thought, I don’t really mind modifying the existing classes; I’m just interested in the best solution.

How do I best create objects from configuration files in this manner?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could take the following approach:

    Each of your model-classes to be populated from the configuration-file should implement an interface with, for example, a method fromArray($data).

    On the top-level you know the type of Object (a Form) you want to create. This object is instanciated and the data from your config-file passed to the fromArray-method. The object then traverses the configuration-data and “knows” what to do with each of the entries.

    For each element of the ‘fields’-array it can then pass the data on to the child-objects which
    can themselves traverse and handle the configuration properly (including things like interpreting ‘today’ in a special way for any field that accepts a date).

    Just split up the responsibility of creating object into special methods that know how to handle this kind of object.

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