Re: inheriting from non similar types?

D_C wrote:

Hiya - I want to create a class that inherits from a database object. eg I have my own "user" Class, with general methods that do calculations etc. However, it also reflects a table of the database, eg "age, location". I want some methods called on the object to be handled by my class, but other so at constructor time, something like $this->parent = mysql_fetch_object($res); // returns a mysql obj with age, loc etc records then ... $age = $userObj->age; // this actually comes straight from the dbase obj $rating = $userObj->rating; // a public var calculated at construction $life = $userObj->getSpend(); // this is a method to do a calc. I could use a component (is the right OOP pattern word?) $age = $userObj->dbObj->age but I wanted to hide where the items are coming from. Also i want to be able to just keep adding to the database without having to create gettter/settter functions for everything... I think python had some nice means of doing get/set functions transparently, does PHP5 have anything like this?

very basically, add a __get() function to your User class. (or its base class or whatever): function __get($var) { // $userObj->dbObj should be protected/private if (isset($this->dbObj->$var)) { return $this->dbObj->$var; } } if you now do: echo $userObj->rating; echo $userObj->age; this will output as if you had called: echo $userObj->dbObj->rating; echo $userObj->dbObj->age; assuming that rating and age don't exist as public properties in $userObj, and do exist in $userObj->dbObj.

thanks! /dc