Question

I have a similar structure like this:

Parent class

abstract class parentActions extends sfActions
{
   // overloaded from sfActions
   public function preExecute()
   {
     // do some stuff before every action
   }

}

Child class

class someActions extends parentActions
{
  public function preExecute()
  {
     // do some more stuff
     parent::preExecute();
  }
}

Now my question is: How can I enforce a call to parent::preExecute() in the child method which overwrites it?

Is there maybe some other way in symfony I don’t know yet (another method which doesn’t overloading or something)?

The parent method needs to be called, or otherwise functionality is broken!

Answer 1

This is exactly what inheritance should do; the child specializes a method while retaining the pre and post conditions. This makes it possible to substitute a parent class with a child class.

Perhaps you could declare empty hooks in the parent class that get implemented in the child class and add final to the preExecute() declaration to prevent accidental overrides.