Is there a magic method for calling an attribute as a method in php?

Question

For example, we have the class:

class foo
{
var $bar = 1;
}

I was wondering if you could run something if I called it that:

$foo = new foo;
$foo->bar();

Answer 1

The magical method __call does that.

Behold:

class Foo {

      protected $bar;

      public function __call($method, $arguments) {
           return isset($this->$method) ? $this->$method : null;
      }
 }

What is the purpose of the __call?

The method __call will perform an action when you call a method from a class that is not declared or inaccessible (protected and private, for example).

It is always necessary to declare two parameters for this function: The first is the name of the method you tried to invoke, and the second, the past arguments (these are stored in a array).

Recommendations

I would recommend you maintain a standard for using such "magic features". For example, you always detect if the method you tried to call starts with the word get.

Behold:

class Foo {

      protected $bar = 'bar';

      public function __call($method, $arguments) {

            if (substr($method, 0, 3) == 'get')
            {
                $prop = strtolower(substr($method, 3));

                return $this->$prop;
            }


            throw new \BadMethodCallException("Method $method is not defined");

      }
 }

So when you accessed the method getBar, you would get the value of $bar.

  $foo = new Foo;

  $foo->getBar(); // Retorna 'bar'

Note: If we had declared the public method bar in class Foo, the value returned would be different because the method exists (and is a method public), then __call would not be invoked.

  public function bar() {

      return 'Valor do método, não da propriedade';

  }

Accretion

It is highly recommended not to use the keyword var, since in version 5 of PHP was to introduce the visibility keywords public, protected and private, when declaring the visibility of a method.