Question

The concept of adding a variable to a class’s extension is something I am not grasping and could use some help.

This is an example of a class I am extending. It works great but I can’t access the $XML variable. I could make $XML a global but I know to avoid doing that.

<?php

//Sample XML Object
  $XML = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
        <data><foo>Bingo!</foo></data>";
  $XML = simplexml_load_string($XML);
// Extend the class
  class myExt extends ENTERPRISE {
      public function HTMLBlock() {
          // Set font
          $this->SetFont('helvetica', 'B', 10);
          $html = '
            <P style="font-weight:normal;">
             This is a test text cell<br />
             Foo is set to '.$XML->foo.'
            </P>
          ';
          // Title
          $this->htmlToBlock(90, '200', $HTML );
       }
  }

  $pdf = new myExt('L', 'Letter', 'Landscape', true, 'UTF-8', false);
?>  

I have read about constructs. I know I need to add to the parent construct, I still don’t undersand where/how I send it the variable. I started with something like this. (not working)

<?php

//Sample XML Object
  $XML = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
        <data><foo>1</foo></data>";
  $XML = simplexml_load_string($XML);

// Extend the class
  class myExt extends ENTERPRISE {
      function __construct($xmlData) {
        parent::__construct();
      }
      public function HTMLBlock() {
          // Set font
          $this->SetFont('helvetica', 'B', 10);
          $html = '
            <P style="font-weight:normal;">
             This is a test text cell<br />
             Foo is set to '.$XML->foo.'
            </P>
          ';
          // Title
          $this->htmlToBlock(90, '200', $HTML );
       }
  }

  $pdf = new myExt('L', 'Letter', 'Landscape', true, 'UTF-8', false);
?>  

Do I somehow send the myExt() an additional parameter? Magically at the end? I tried it but didn’t work. Maybe something like:

$pdf = new myExt('L', 'Letter', 'Landscape', true, 'UTF-8', false,$XML);

Thanks for any guidance!

Answer 1

This is a really simple example, but if the constructor takes 6 arguments and you wanted to pass it an additional argument you could just override the default constructor. If you post the ENTERPRISE class I’ll update this response!

<?php

//Sample XML Object
  $XML = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
        <data><foo>Bingo!</foo></data>";
  $XML = simplexml_load_string($XML);
// Extend the class
  class myExt extends ENTERPRISE {
      var $XML;
      function __construct($arg1, $arg2, $arg3, $arg4, $arg5, $arg6, $XML)
      {
        parent::__construct($arg1, $arg2, $arg3, $arg4, $arg5, $arg6);
        $this->XML = $XML;
      }
      public function HTMLBlock() {
          // Set font
          $this->SetFont('helvetica', 'B', 10);
          $html = '
            <P style="font-weight:normal;">
             This is a test text cell<br />
             Foo is set to '.$this->XML->foo.'
            </P>
          ';
          // Title
          $this->htmlToBlock(90, '200', $HTML );
       }
  }

  $pdf = new myExt('L', 'Letter', 'Landscape', true, 'UTF-8', false, $XML);
?> 

Also note that variables in PHP ARE case-sensitive. So in your HTMLBlock method $html != $HTML.