Re: Alias stdClass to DynamicObject?

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 5:28 PM Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote: > What do people think about adding such an alias? Is this worthwhile? > What if DynamicObject becomes an interface instead of an alias? In the future stdClass could be deprecated and replaced by anonymous classes using the DynamicObject interface to prevent manual initialization. I feel like renaming (this seems to be the end-goal) will not solve some of the problems that stdClass brings to php. Hamza Ahmad brought the interface up in the other thread: https://externals.io/message/115800#115806 . ```php // core php interface DynamicObject { /* ... /*} // in case of removal, legacy support could be kept as class stdClass implements DynamicObject { use DynamicObjectTrait; // perhaps also core php? } // a library wants a DynamicObject for whatever reason? final class MyCustomDataObject implements DynamicObject { public function __get(string $name) : mixed { // as a developer I now have full control over where // this data comes from and is stored internally } /* ... */ } ``` To me it feels like making this an interface gives PHP more flexibility in dealing with this in the future. One intermediate step could be to turn stdClass into an interface that extends DynamicObject. 8.2 could deprecate manual instantiation of stdClass, meaning that in 9.0 it could be removed as class and turned into an interface, reducing the need to update code relying on the stdClass types. get_class would still return stdClass in 8.x and thus not break when using a DynamicObject.