Question

I have a public method for creating sub-elements in my framework called addElement() which is defined as follows:

// addElement - adds an element (experimental version)
public function addElement() {
    if ($arguments = func_get_args()) {
        $class = "\\UI\\{$arguments[0]}";

        if (func_num_args() > 1) {
            $parameters = null;

            foreach (array_slice($arguments, 1) as $argument) {
                $parameters[] = (is_numeric($argument) ? $argument : "\"{$argument}\"");
            }

            $this->elements[($arguments[0] === HTML ? uniqid() : $arguments[1])] = new $class(implode(", ", $parameters));
        }
    }
}

and it gets called like this:

$article1 = new \UI\Article("article1");
$article->addElement(\UI\Aside, "aside1");

or, alternatively (depending on if you need direct access to the new element):

$article1 = new \UI\Article("article1");
$aside1 = $article->addElement(\UI\Aside, "aside1");

The problem comes when I use a method accepting more than two arguments (the type of element and its name, internal-wise), and it’s this:

$article1 = new \UI\Article("article1");
$article1->addElement(\UI\Abbreviation, "abbr1", "RAM", "Random Access Memory");

Using this method, the arguments passed to the function are, literally:

"abbr1", "RAM", "Random Access Memory"

My intention was for this string to be passed like if you were normally passing arguments to a given function. How can I perform that (it’s ok if I need to re-structure the function, although I would ideally like to just add the missing bits, if it’s correct to proceed like this)?

Answer 1

You can use reflection when you get an instance of the class, and pass it an array of arguments, like this:

$ref = new ReflectionClass( $class);
$this->elements[($arguments[0] === HTML ? uniqid() : $arguments[1])] = $ref->newInstanceArgs( $parameters);

You also don’t need this:

$parameters = null;

foreach (array_slice($arguments, 1) as $argument) {
     $parameters[] = (is_numeric($argument) ? $argument : "\"{$argument}\"");
}

You can replace the contents of that if statement with the above code placed after this:

$parameters = array_slice( $arguments, 1);