Question

Is there a way to make a read-only property of an object in PHP? I have an object with a couple arrays in it. I want to access them as I normally would an array

echo $objObject->arrArray[0];

But I don’t want to be able to write to those arrays after they’re constructed. It feels like a PITA to construct a local variable:

$arrArray = $objObject->getArray1();
echo $arrArray[0];

And anyways, while it keeps the array in the object pristine, it doesn’t prevent me from re-writing the local array variable.

Answer 1

Well, the question is where do you want to prevent writing from?

The first step is making the array protected or private to prevent writing from outside of the object scope:

protected $arrArray = array();

If from "outside" of the array, a GETTER will do you fine. Either:

public function getArray() { return $this->arrArray; }

And accessing it like

$array = $obj->getArray();

or

public function __get($name) {
    return isset($this->$name) ? $this->$name : null;
}

And accessing it like:

$array = $obj->arrArray;

Notice that they don’t return references. So you cannot change the original array from outside the scope of the object. You can change the array itself…

If you really need a fully immutable array, you could use a Object using ArrayAccess…

Or, you could simply extend ArrayObject and overwrite all of the writing methods:

class ImmutableArrayObject extends ArrayObject {
    public function append($value) {
        throw new LogicException('Attempting to write to an immutable array');
    }
    public function exchangeArray($input) {
        throw new LogicException('Attempting to write to an immutable array');
    }
    public function offsetSet($index, $newval) {
        throw new LogicException('Attempting to write to an immutable array');
    }
    public function offsetUnset($index) {
        throw new LogicException('Attempting to write to an immutable array');
    }
}

Then, simply make $this->arrArray an instance of the object:

public function __construct(array $input) {
    $this->arrArray = new ImmutableArrayObject($input);
}

It still supports most array like usages:

count($this->arrArray);
echo $this->arrArray[0];
foreach ($this->arrArray as $key => $value) {}

But if you try to write to it, you’ll get a LogicException…

Oh, but realize that if you need to write to it, all you need to do (within the object) is do:

$newArray = $this->arrArray->getArrayCopy();
//Edit array here
$this->arrArray = new ImmutableArrayObject($newArray);