Question

in my class i have an array defined like this

class t {
    var $settings = array();
}

I will have these settings used quite a lot, so instead of writing $this->settings['setting'] all over the place I wanted to deploy a function that automatically defines these settings in local variables.

private function get_settings () {

            $array = $this->settings['array'];
            $foreign_key = $this->settings['foreign_key'];
            $limit = $this->settings['limit'];
            $tableclassid = $this->settings['tableclassid'];
            $pager = $this->settings['pager'];
            $container = $this->settings['container'];
            $extracolumn = $this->settings['extracolumn'];
    }

now, what I want to do is to get these variables and use them in another function within class. In example

public function test () {
     $this->get_settings();
     return $foreign_key;
}

and I want it to return $this->settings['foreign_key']

is there a way to do this? Or do I have to clutter all the functions with that block of code get_settings() has?

I appreciate the help.. thanks 🙂

Answer 1

Use the built-in extract() function, which extracts an array into individual variables in the current scope.

extract($this->settings);

If you need modifications to these local variables to be reflected in the original array, extract them as references.

extract($this->settings, EXTR_REFS);

I can’t say I would prefer to use this method myself though, or even recommend that you do it. Inside of a class, it is much more readable and understandable to keep them in the array property. In general, I never actually use extract().