Question

I have a very weird problem that when I call the method of a class from within the constructor I get as a result empty arrays, but when I call the method from the class instance it works fine.

Here is the code for loadxml.php:

include('XMLNode.php'); // this is a simple object class

class LoadXML
{
public $MyNodes = array();

public function __constructor($xmlFile)
{
    $this->getNodes($xmlFile);
}

public function getNodes($xmlFile)
{
    if (file_exists($xmlFile)) {
        $xmlNodes = simplexml_load_file($xmlFile);

        foreach ($xmlNodes->XMLNode as $key => $value) {
            array_push($this->MyNodes, $value);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        exit('Failed to open xml file '.$xmlFile);
    }
}
}

Now in the main file if I make the call like this:

include('loadxml.php');

$nodes = new LoadXML('myXMLFile.xml');

print "<pre>";
print_r($nodes);
print "</pre>";

… the result looks like this:

LoadXML Object
(
[MyNodes] => Array
(
)
)

If I make the call from the class instance like this and comment out the call to getNodes from the LoadXML constructor:

include('loadxml.php');

$nodes = new LoadXML();
$nodes->getNodes('myXMLFile.xml');

print "<pre>";
print_r($nodes);
print "</pre>";

I will get the correct output. What’s happening? What am I doing wrong in the first approach? Am I missing something from the class constructor? I looked in the manual (http://php.net/manual/en/oop4.newref.php) and the call to the method seems legit from within the constructor.

Answer 1

Try renaming your constructor to __construct