Allow to set undefined properties in yii\base\Object

[mikehaertl]

I have to come back to my closed issue #12021. It seems that this is still not fixed in Yii 2.1.

My description and use case there is still valid.

The outcome of #12021 was, that this should be implemented via a trait. But it seems this never happened in 2.1.

tl;dr: I want to use the magic getter/setter methods from yii\base\BaseObject to be available in my custom classes. But I don't want that this changes PHP's default behavior, where you can also set undefined properties on a class.

<?php
class X
{
}

$x = new X;
$x->demo = 'x';   // No error, PHP allows to have dynamic properties

echo $x->wtf;  // Error, because 'wtf' was not set yet.

Yii changes this default behavior of PHP:

<?php
class X extends yii\base\BaseObject
{
}

$x = new X;

// This will throw an error:
$x->demo = 'x';

[beroso]

You can create your custom Object class that extends yii\base\Object and overrides the __set with your proposed code:

    public function __set($name, $value)
    {
        $setter = 'set' . $name;
        if (method_exists($this, $setter)) {
            $this->$setter($value);
        } elseif (method_exists($this, 'get' . $name)) {
            throw new InvalidCallException('Setting read-only property: ' . get_class($this) . '::' . $name);
        } else {
            // Instead of throwing exception:
            $this->$name = $value;
        }
    }

And your custom classes can extends your custom Object.

[samdark]

OK. Let's have another look at it. Yii indeed enhances default PHP objects behavior adding several features:

• Getters/setters.
• Strict errors when non-existing property is set.

On top if it, Component adds:

• Events.
• Behaviors.

Ideally we want to divide these into traits and be able to use any combination of these traits for any object.

The problem is that same __get(), __set() and other magic methods are used by all these features therefore I don't immediately see a good way to achieve that.

[samdark]

We could probably add a specialized trait that could be configured with an array of handlers for the purpose but I do not see any way for it to be as performant as current solution.

[mikehaertl]

I don't know a perfect way either. Each thinkable solution has shortcomings. Still, my current favourite is having a (optional!!) class property like:

public $__strictGetSet = false;

Only if defined this would disable checks for existing properties. The default would be the same behavior we have now.

[mikehaertl]

You can create your custom Object class that extends yii\base\Object and overrides the __set with your proposed code:

@berosoboy Sure, but I may also want to extend a more complex Yii class and still disable that behavior. With your suggestion I'd basically end up duplicating a lot of Yii classes in that case.

[SilverFire]

I'd rather see it as LooseGetSetInterface that may be applied to class to indicate that __get()/__set() methods should not check property existence.

[mikehaertl]

@SilverFire You mean an empty interface (interface LooseGetSetInterface {}) that's only used to flag certain classes? I like that idea. It's also straightforward to check for that in the magic method.

[ghost]

This issue was moved by samdark to yiisoft/yii-core#41.