Question

I’ve had a good look round and can’t seem to find an answer to this problem.

Basically I’m using the _call method to dynmically generate get and set methods, however when declaring a variable PHP’s default is public. Is there anyway to declare a variable from within a class as protected?

function __call($method, $arguments) {
    $prefix = strtolower(substr($method, 0, 3));
    $property = strtolower(substr($method, 3));

    if (empty($prefix) || empty($property)) {
        return;
    }

    if ($prefix == "get" && isset($this->$property)) {
        return $this->$property;
    }

    if ($prefix == "set") {

        $this->$property = $arguments[0];
    }
}

Answer 1

One option would be to have a protected array, and to set an element in that array from your magic setter.

class MyClass {
    protected $_myProperties = array();

    public function __get($name) {
        if (isset($this->_myProperties[$name])) {
            return $this->_myProperties[$name];
        } else {
            return null;
        }
    }

    public function __set($name, $value) {
        $this->_myProperties[$name] = $value;
    }

    public function __isset($name) {
        return isset($this->_myProperties[$name]);
    }
}