Question

This might look as a stupid question. But, I have a class with some public string variables defined in it.

Upon assigning a value to a property:

$a = new user();
$a->FirstName = "sth";

I want to store the value as UTF8.

I know I can do this via:

$a->Firstname = utf8_encode("sth");

However, I want the object to do this automatically.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Otherwise no, the object cannot do it automatically.

Not automatically, but automagically!

<?php

class User {
    /**
     * Change the public to private/protected!
     */
    private $Firstname;

    /**
     * This is automatically called upon calling a value that can't be written "from the outside".
     */
    public function __set( $key, $value ) {
        $this->$key = utf8_encode( $value );
    }

    public function __get( $key ) {
        return isset( $this->$key ) ? $this->$key : false;
    }
}

$user = new User;
$user->Firstname = 'Berry';

echo $user->Firstname;

The better solution would be to refactor in using mutators and accessors, or better yet, learn OO.