Question

My question is rather simple, here is the context:

http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.magic.php

Magic Methods

The function names __construct(), __destruct(), __call(),
__callStatic(), __get(), __set(), __isset(), __unset(), __sleep(), __wakeup(), __toString(), __invoke(), __set_state() and __clone() are magical in PHP classes. You cannot have functions with these names in
any of your classes unless you want the magic functionality associated
with them.

PHP reserves all function names starting with __ as magical. It is recommended that you do not use function names with __ in PHP unless you want some documented magic functionality.

I get what these methods are for and how to use them. What I don’t understand is this:

…unless you want some documented magic functionality.

What does that even mean? Are there actual reasons to create user defined __magicMethods()?

Answer 1

I think that they only mean that it’s better not to use __ as a starting name for your methods because PHP has reserved that convention for his magic methods and if you do use that for a method it might get overriden in the future and have some magic functionality. At least that’s how i understood that

EDIT – to be even clearer: Let’s say thatyou implement for your own business logic a method called __toNumber(). In a future version of PHP they decide that whenever an object is used as a number (maybe when you do $result = 3 * $yourObject) the magic method __toNumber() will be invoked…your object will have some “Magic” documented functionality even if you didn’t specifically add it