Detect if an object property is private in PHP

Question

I\'m trying to make a PHP (5) object that can iterate through its properties, building an SQL query based only on its public properties, not its private ones.

As this pa

Answer 1

If you cast the object to an array before iterating over it, the private and protected members will have special prefixes:

class Test{
  public $a = 1;
  private $b = 1;
  protected $c = 1;
}
$a = new Test();
var_dump((array) $a);

displays this:

array(3) {
  ["a"]=>
  int(1)
  ["Testb"]=>
  int(1)
  ["*c"]=>
  int(1)
}

There are hidden characters there too, that don't get displayed. But you can write code to detect them. For example, the regular expression /\0\*\0(.*)$/ will match protected keys, and /\0.*\0(.*)$/ will match private ones. In both, the first capturing group matches the member name.

Answer 2

You can use an array to store public properties, add some wrapper method and use array to insert data to SQL.

Answer 3

You can use Reflection to examine the properties of the class. To get only public and protected properties, profile a suitable filter to the ReflectionClass::getProperties method.

Here's a quicky example of your makeString method using it.

public function makeString()
{
    $string = "";
    $reflection = new ReflectionObject($this);
    $properties = $reflection->getProperties(ReflectionProperty::IS_PUBLIC);
    foreach ($properties as $property) {
        $name    = $property->getName();
        $value   = $property->getValue($this);
        $string .= sprintf(" property '%s' = '%s' <br/>", $name, $value);
    }
    return $string;
}

Answer 4

Check this code from http://php.net/manual/reflectionclass.getproperties.php#93984

  public function listProperties() {
    $reflect = new ReflectionObject($this);
    foreach ($reflect->getProperties(ReflectionProperty::IS_PUBLIC /* + ReflectionProperty::IS_PROTECTED*/) as $prop) {
      print $prop->getName() . "\n";
    }
  }

Answer 5

foreach (get_class_vars(get_class($this)) ....

Answer 6

A quicker solution that I found:

class Extras
{
    public static function get_vars($obj)
    {
        return get_object_vars($obj);
    }
}

and then call inside of your testClass:

$vars = Extras::get_vars($this);

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