Question

the question is simple. I have a base abstract class (person). From this i have extended another class (patients).

I save personal information (e.g. firstname, lastname) in PERSONS table [there is an ADD function. ]. Patient specific information (like illness, medicines, …) are saved into a separate PATIENTS class. [there is an ADD function that calls the parent, then some code].

How do I prevent person’s add function from accessing properties defined inside it’s child, patients?

In order to make it more clear, here is a sample code:

class P {
public P_var = 'Anoush' ; 
public function add ()
{
  // find all properties:
  foreach ($this as $prop => $val )
  {
     $insertables [$prop] = $val ; 
  }
  // insert all VALUES FIELDSET etc. based on the array created above 

}

class CH extends P {
public CH_var1 = 'ravan' ; 
public CH_var2 = 'something' ; 
}

Then when I call add, the $insertables will contain P_var, CH_var1 , CH_var2. I only want it to have P_var.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can do this by using Reflection (see http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.reflection.php).

class Parent {
    public function add() {
        $insertables = $this->_getOwnProperties(__CLASS__);
        // ...
    }

    protected function _getOwnProperties($className) {
        $reflection = new ReflectionClass($this);
        $props = array();

        foreach ($reflection->getProperties() as $name => $prop) {
            if ($prop->class == $className) {
                $props[$name] = $prop;
            }
        }

        return $props;
    }
}

However, I recommend refactoring your code instead to get a cleaner solution (e.g. add a method getProperties() (maybe defined by an interface) or whatever. Then let your database class invoke that function in order to get the list of properties to store in the database.