Re: "Bless"ing an object

Wouter, you could try this adding this method to each object you need blessings from: function &bless($classname) {

    if ($classname == get_class($this)) {
        return $this;
    }
    $vars = get_object_vars($this);
    $ret = new $classname;
    return $ret->loadValues($vars);

} function &loadValues($vals) {

    foreach ($vals as $name => $val) {
        $this->$name = $val;
    }
    return $this;

} In the Load() method, you should determine what class you need, and call $ret = &$this->bless('classname'), and then return $ret. Then, instead of doing $Thing->Load(); do $Thing = &$Thing->Load(); and have Load() return an object instance (either $this or the newly blessed object). This will maintain encapsulation and achieve the results you're looking for. Regards, Greg Wouter Van Vliet wrote:

Hi Folks I was wondering (mostly because I came across some situations where I need it) if PHP supplies any methods to "bless" an array or object to become some other object. In perl, I can simply do: my $SomeInstance = bless { item => 'value', 'Item2' => 'value2' }, 'SomeObject'; And then if I decide that $SomeInstance should be an intance of some other object: bless $SomeInstance, 'OtherObject'; In PHP it would be extremely useful for for doing something like this: <?php Class Foo { Load() { ( .. ) } }; Class Bar extends Foo { } $Thing = new Foo(); $Thing->Load(); ?> In Load the object data is loaded from the database, and now imagine one row to contain the subclass this instance of Foo should become. I then would want $Thing to become and thus behave like an instance of Bar (if my database row says so). Hope this message wasn't too confusing ;) Wouter