Question

Right now I’m trying to write a function that would allow me to access member functions. The code in question looks a little like this:

protected $formName;
protected $formClass;
protected $formAction;
protected $formMethod;
protected $formObjArray = array(); //outputs in order. So far it should only take newLine, selectTag, inputTag, textTag.
protected $submitBtnVal;
protected $encType;

function __construct($args) {
  $this->formName = $args['formName'];
  $this->formAction = $args['formAction'];

  if (isset($args['formClass'])) $this->formClass = $args['formClass'];
  if (isset($args['encType'])) $this->encType = $args['encType'];

  //default should be POST. Hell, you should never really be using GET for this..
  //also, the default submit value is Submit
  $this->formMethod = isset($args['formMethod']) ? $args['formMethod'] : "POST"; 
  $this->submitBtnVal = isset($args['submitBtnVal']) ? $args['submitBtnVal'] : "Submit";
}

//get functions
function getFormName () { return $this->formName; }
function getFormAction () { return $this->formAction; }
function getFormMethod () { return $this->formMethod; }
function getSubmitBtnVal () { return $this->submitBtnVal; }
function getEncType () { return $this->encType; }

//set functions
function setFormName ($newName) { $this->fromName = $newName; }
function setFormAction ($newAction) { $this->formAction = $newAction; }
function setFormMethod ($newMethod) { $this->formMethod = $newMethod; }
function setEncType ($newEType) { $this->encType = $newEType; }

function addTag($newTag) {
  if ($newTag instanceof formTag || $newTag instanceof fieldSetCont || $newTag instanceof newLine
      || $newTag instanceof noteTag)
    $this->formObjArray[] = $newTag;
  else throw new Exception ("You did not add a compatible tag.");
}

I’d like to be able to call $myForm->getTagByName("nameA")->setRequired(true);

How would I do that? Or would I need to do something more like..

$tagID = $myForm->getTagByName("nameA");
$myForm->tagArray(tagID)->setRequired(true);

Answer 1

Nothing in your code seems to be protected so you should have no trouble accessing any of it.

It looks like all your tags are in $formObjArray so it should be trivial to filter than array and return tags that match the name you’ve passed in. The trouble you will have is that, getTagByName really should be getTagsByName and should return an array because you can have more than one tag with the same name. Since it will return an array, you can not call setRequired on the return value, arrays don’t have such a method. You’ll need to do it more like:

$tags = $myForm->getTagsByName("nameA");
foreach ($tags as $tag) {
    $tag->setRequired(true);
}

Exactly what are you stuck on? Maybe I don’t understand the question very well.

So maybe the filtering has you stuck? Try this (if you you’re using at least php 5.3)

function getTagsByName($tagname) 
{
    return array_filter($this->formObjArray, function($tag) use($tagname) { 
        return $tag->getName() == $tagname; 
    });
}

No ifs or switches.

Prior to 5.3, you don’t have lambda functions so you need to do it differently. There are several options but this may be the simplest to understand:

function getTagsByName($tagname) 
{
    $out = array();
    foreach ($this->formObjArray as &$tag) {
        if ($tag->getName() == $tagname) {
            $out[] = $tag;
        }
    }
    return $out;
}