Question

With this code I’m trying to test if I can call certain functions

if (method_exists($this, $method))
    $this->$method();

however now I want to be able to restrict the execution if the $method is protected, what would I need to do?

Answer 1

You’ll want to use Reflection.

class Foo { 
    public function bar() { } 
    protected function baz() { } 
    private function qux() { } 
}
$f = new Foo();
$f_reflect = new ReflectionObject($f);
foreach($f_reflect->getMethods() as $method) {
    echo $method->name, ": ";
    if($method->isPublic()) echo "Public\n";
    if($method->isProtected()) echo "Protected\n";
    if($method->isPrivate()) echo "Private\n";
}

Output:

bar: Public
baz: Protected
qux: Private

You can also instantiate the ReflectionMethod object by class and function name:

$bar_reflect = new ReflectionMethod('Foo', 'bar');
echo $bar_reflect->isPublic(); // 1