Question

With an example class such as this:

class Test{
    public function &__get($name){
        print_r($name);
    }
}

An instance of Test will kick back output as such:

$myTest = new Test;
$myTest->foo['bar']['hello'] = 'world';
//outputs only foo

Is there a way I can get more information about what dimension of the array is being accessed, showing me (from the previous example) that the bar element of foo, and the hello element of bar are being targeted?

Answer 1

You can’t with the current implementation. In order for this to work, you will have to create an array object (i.e.: an object that implements ArrayAccess). Something like:

class SuperArray implements ArrayAccess {
    protected $_data = array();
    protected $_parents = array();

    public function __construct(array $data, array $parents = array()) {
        $this->_parents = $parents;
        foreach ($data as $key => $value) {
            if (is_array($value)) {
                $value = new SuperArray($value, array_merge($this->_parents, array($key)));
            }
            $this[$key] = $value;
        }
    }

    public function offsetGet($offset) {
        if (!empty($this->_parents)) echo "['".implode("']['", $this->_parents)."']";
        echo "['$offset'] is being accessed\n";
        return $this->_data[$offset];
    } 

    public function offsetSet($offset, $value) {
        if ($offset === '') $this->_data[] = $value;
        else $this->_data[$offset] = $value;
    } 

    public function offsetUnset($offset) {
        unset($this->_data[$offset]);
    } 

    public function offsetExists($offset) {
        return isset($this->_data[$offset]);
    } 
}

class Test{
    protected $foo;

    public function __construct() {
        $array['bar']['hello'] = 'world';
        $this->foo = new SuperArray($array); 
    }

    public function __get($name){
        echo $name.' is being accessed.'.PHP_EOL;
        return $this->$name;
    }
}

$test = new Test;
echo $test->foo['bar']['hello'];

Should output:

foo is being accessed.
['bar'] is being accessed
['bar']['hello'] is being accessed
world