Question

I often use properties in my classes that store an array of options. I’d like to be able to somehow merge those options from defaults declared in a parent class.

I demonstrated with some code.

class A
{
    public $options = array('display'=>false,'name'=>'John');
}

class B extends A
{
    public $options = array('name'=>'Mathew');
}

Now when I create B, then I’d like $options to contain a merged array from A::options

What happens now is this.

$b = new B();
print_r($b);
array('name'=>'Mathew');

I would like something like this using array_merge_recursive().

array('display'=>false,'name'=>'Mathew');

• Maybe it’s something I could do in the constructor?
• Is it possible to make this a behavior of class A? So that I don’t always have to implement the same code in all subclasses.
• Could I use reflection to auto find array properties in both classes and merge them?

Answer 1

I realize I changed your interface from a public variable to a method, but maybe it works for you. Beware, adding a naive setOps($ops) method may work unexpected if you allow the parent ops to continue to be merged in.

class A
{
    private $ops = array('display'=>false, 'name'=>'John');
    public function getops() { return $this->ops; }
}
class B extends A
{
    private $ops = array('name'=>'Mathew');
    public function getops() { return array_merge(parent::getOps(), $this->ops); }
}
class c extends B
{
    private $ops = array('c'=>'c');
    public function getops() { return array_merge(parent::getOps(), $this->ops); }
}

$c = new C();
print_r($c->getops());

out:

Array
(
    [display] => 
    [name] => Mathew
    [c] => c
)