Question

I have an entity which defines inheritance like this:

* @DiscriminatorColumn(name="type", type="string")
* @DiscriminatorMap({"text" = "TextAttribute", "boolean" = "BooleanAttribute", "numeric" = "NumericAttribute", "date" = "DateAttribute"})

I am wondering is it possible to have getter for field ‘type’? I know I can use instanceof (and in most cases this is what I’m doing) but there are few scenarios where $item->getType() would make my life so much easier.

Answer 1

Extending what beberlei said, you could declare some constants in the Attribute class, and an abstract getType() function. Then, overload it in every derived attribute class.

Something like:

abstract class Attribute {
    const TYPE_BOOL = 0;
    const TYPE_INT  = 1;
    ...
    abstract public function getType();
}

class BooleanAttribute extends Attribute {
    public function getType() {
        return parent::TYPE_BOOL;
    }
}