Re: calling parent class method from the outside

Colin Guthrie wrote:

admin wrote:

Inside the body of method foo() you can of course use syntax like parent::foo(). But is there a way to call the parent version of obj->foo() outside the class? That kind of syntax is allowed in C++, for example: Aclass a; if (a.Aparent::foo()) ...; [snipped]

I agree with Jochem that if you find you need to do this, then you're probably not designing the code correctly.

OK, here we go: Propel in Symfony uses generated model classes representing DB rows, stub classes inheriting from them ready to be used (such as below), and accessors representing data columns: class Foo extends BaseFoo {

        public function setBar($value)
        {
                $this->doSetColumn(FooPeer::BAR, $value, __FUNCTION__);
        }

        public function setBaz($value)
        {
                $this->doSetColumn(FooPeer::BAZ, $value, __FUNCTION__);
        }

        public function setXyzzy($value)
        {
                $this->doSetColumn(FooPeer::XYZZY, $value, __FUNCTION__);
        }

        // several more of these, and finally...

        private function doSetColumn($colname, $value, $col_mutator)
        {
                /* setter does what it has to do and calls the parent
                 * version of self to do the real work of modifying
                 * state
                 */
                // ...
                if ($something)
                    parent::$col_mutator($junk_to_trigger_modified);
                // ...

                parent::$col_mutator($value);
        }

} There are several models (tables) such as Foo, and they all have the same body of doSetColumn(), so a logical next step was to factor that method away _and_ leave most of the code intact, in which I've failed. Once again, calling the parent version of a method "externally" is allowed in C++ (and whoever said it was bad design should speak up to Bjarne Stroustrup ;-)) Any such trick in PHP?