Question

I’ve got a Collection of closely related Objects. Before I add an Object to the collection, I want to check the class instance to make sure it’s OK.

Normally, I like all my objects in a collection to have a similar baseClass OR interface so I can use type hinting but in this case, the objects aren’t like that.

I like the way instanceof works. I don’t want to have to manage a list of namespaces.

Answer 1

Using the new 5.4 [] for array() syntax – create an array of valid classnames:

private $validClasses = ['MyFirstClass','MySecondClass','MyThirdClass'];

Next, create a function to test.

public function testClass($class){
    $arr = explode("\\", get_class($class) );
    if ( !in_array( array_pop($arr) , $this->validClasses  ) ){
    throw new \Exception('Invalid Class - Cannot be added to the Collection.');
     }
}