This is a very special scenario and you may never want to really do this, but I found myself in the necessity of changing the visibility of an object’s methods an attributes at runtime so I could access them directly.
To do this I had to use reflection and magic methods in a magic way. Since we can’t just plug methods to an object in PHP, I had to create a class with already defined magic methods that would allow me to access the protected and private members of an object using reflection.
This is the class I created with an explanation of what it does:
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<?php
class PublicObject
{
/**
* Object in which we'll call methods, get and set attributes
* @var object
*/
protected $_object;
/**
* Exposed properties of the object
* @var array
*/
protected $_properties;
/**
* Exposed methods of the object
* @var array
*/
protected $_methods;
/**
* Make non-public members of the given object accessible
*
* @param object $object.- Object which members we'll make accessible
*/
public function __construct($object)
{
// Save the object so we can later call methods and access attributes
$this->_object = $object;
// Get a reflected version of the object
$reflected = new ReflectionObject($this->_object);
// Get all private and protected properties of the object
$this->_properties = array();
$properties = $reflected->getProperties(
ReflectionProperty::IS_PROTECTED | ReflectionProperty::IS_PRIVATE
);
// Loop all the properties, make them accessible and save them for
// later reference
foreach ($properties as $property) {
$property->setAccessible(true);
$this->_properties[$property->getName()] = $property;
}
// Get all private and protected methods of the object
$this->_methods = array();
$methods = $reflected->getMethods(
ReflectionProperty::IS_PROTECTED | ReflectionProperty::IS_PRIVATE
);
// Loop all the methods, make them accessible and save them for
// later reference
foreach ($methods as $method) {
$method->setAccessible(true);
$this->_methods[$method->getName()] = $method;
}
}
/**
* Returns a property of $this->_object
*
* @param string $name
*
* @return mixed
*/
public function __get($name)
{
// If the property is exposed (with reflection) then we use getValue()
// to access it, else we access it directly
if (isset($this->_properties[$name])) {
return $this->_properties[$name]->getValue($this->_object);
} else {
return $this->_object->$name;
}
}
/**
* Sets a property of this->_object
*
* @param string $name
* @param mixed $value
*/
public function __set($name, $value)
{
// If the property is exposed (with reflection) then we use setValue()
// to access it, else we access it directly
if (isset($this->_properties[$name])) {
$this->_properties[$name]->setValue($this->_object, $value);
} else {
$this->_object->$name = $value;
}
}
/**
* Calls a method of this->_object
*
* @param string $name
* @param array $args
*
* @return mixed
*/
public function __call($name, $args)
{
// If the method is exposed (with reflection) then we use invokeArgs()
// to call it, else we use call_user_func_array
if (isset($this->_methods[$name])) {
return $this->_methods[$name]->invokeArgs($this->_object, $args);
} else {
return call_user_func_array(array($this->_object, $name), $args);
}
}
}
And this is an example of how to use it:
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include 'PublicObject.php';
class PrivateClass
{
private $_value;
private function _getValue()
{
return $this->_value;
}
}
$a = new PrivateClass();
$a = new PublicObject($a);
$a->_value = 6;
// This will print 6
echo $a->_getValue();
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