Question

I have a multidimensional array with various config settings. Here’s an example:

$this->data = array();

I want this array to be private so I’ve created a getter:

public function getData(){
    $args = func_get_args();
    $x = $this->data;
    foreach($args as $arg) $x = $x[$arg];
    return $x;
}

and I use it like this:

$value = $obj->getData('country', 'city', 'street');

Everything works fine but the problem is that it is 5x slower (tested with 100,000 iterations) than direct access:

$value = $obj->data['country']['city']['street'];

What is the best way to do this? Is there any way to make this variable read-only or is there a better way to access it without using foreach()?

Answer 1

You can create getter with __get magic method:

public function __get($name) {
    return $this->$name;
}

In such way you can get protected & private properties from anywhere in the same way but set them only inside your class.

If you want only this property to behave in such way, simply use condition:

public function __get($name) {
    return $name === 'data' ? $this->data : null;
}

Of course, __get is even a bit slower then method getter, but it needs to be called only once for access to data property, and every access to any sub-array of it will be as fast as direct access (that means no ugly foreach iterations 🙂 ).