What is the name of the pattern that will ...

Hi. I'm building a class which needs to have certain methods called by the subclass, but the subclass can extend but not obscure/override the behaviour. So, for example, a method AuthRequestMade() will record the activity of making an authorisation request. It cannot make the actual request as that is the subclass's job, but, no matter what, I need to have this method called with the result of the actual auth request. I want to make building the subclasses as simple and as fool proof as possible. I think I have to do something like this ... interface AuthEnforcer{ public function AuthRequestMade(&$i_State, &$s_Message); } abstract class Auth implements AuthEnforcer{ public method MakeAuthRequest(){ // Do my stuff before. // Call the SpecificAuth class $this->AuthRequestMade($i_State, $s_Message); // Do my stuff after with state and message. } } class SpecificAuth extends Auth{ public function AuthRequestMade(&$i_State, &$s_Message){ // Do my specific stuff, setting state and message. } } But a couple of things I don't like (and don't know how to avoid). 1 - The SpecificAuth::AuthRequestMade is public and I want it protected as it shouldn't be called from the public scope. 2 - The response is by ref, but I think having a AuthResponse class containing $i_State and $s_Message should be enough there, but no way to enforce return types in PHP. Any ideas? Thank you. -- Richard Quadling Twitter : @RQuadling EE : http://e-e.com/M_248814.html Zend : http://bit.ly/9O8vFY