Question

In my View (using Zend_View so the the view is an object), I make calls to object properties and methods to populate the template like so:

<?= $this->user->name ?> // Outputs John Doe
<br/>
<?= $this->user->getCompany()->name ?> // Outputs Acme
<br/>
<?= $this->method() ?> // Outputs foobar

If I make it so that all property requests (like for ‘user’) go through __get() is there any way that I can catch the subsequent calls so that I can force a method call on the final outputted value? For example so that I could do automatic escaping of output.

As I see it right now, I either have to escape the input as it goes into the database or use compiled templates like Smarty does, or switch to assigning every variable to the View object so that it has direct control to force escaping before outputting the data.

Answer 1

You could use a decorator. See this simplified example:

class ViewObject_Decorator
{
    protected $_decoratedObject;

    protected $_view;

    public function __construct( $object, Zend_View view )
    {
        $this->_decoratedObject = $object;
        $this->_view = $view;
    }

    public function __get( $property )
    {
        return $this->_view->escape( $this->_decoratedObject->$property );
    }

    /*
        maybe implement __call to proxy to decoratedObject methods, etc...
    */
}

Then your proposed __get method (presuming this is a Zend_View method?) would be something like:

public function __get( $property )
{
    // decorate the requested object, and send the view along with it.
    return new ViewObject_Decorator( $this->$property, $this );
}