Question

In my Yii models for some properties I would like to return some default when the real property is null or empty.

For example say I have a display_name property. When it hasn’t been set, I’d like to return the first_name.

So far the work around I’ve been using is to create a new method with a different name and call this one instead. However it’d be nice if I could achieve this by simply calling $model->display_name the normal way.

Answer 1

I may have found my own answer. I am overriding __get() to check if this is the property I am looking for. I am not sure this is considered “best practice”.

public function __get($name) {
            $current = parent::__get($name);
            switch($name){
                case 'display_name':
                    if(empty($current)){
                        return $this->first_name;
                    }
                    else{
                        return $current;
                    }
                    break;
                default:
                    return $current;
            }
        }