Re: Alias stdClass to DynamicObject?

On 08/09/2021 16:37, Mike Schinkel wrote:

All future code that needs to refer to the class name will still refer to stdClass, so we won't be gaining much by creating an alias.

Just to be clear, the only code that would need to change is code that dynamically gets *out* the class name, from get_class(), var_export(), reflection, and the like. Using the class name in code, like "$foo = new stdClass;" and "$foo instanceof stdClass", would carry on working just fine, whichever way we defined the alias.

Besides, don't forget stdClass::class in addition to get_class().

The ::class syntax is purely string replacement (apart from some rare edge cases), and works identically whether the class exists, is an alias, or doesn't exist at all.

I assume we would also disallow dynamic properties in anonymous classes too, right? After all, they are just statically declared classes that the developer do not assign a name.

The difference I see is that stdClass/DynamicObject allows you to add or remove properties from an object *after it has been created*. I think a lot of use cases don't actually need that, and would benefit from error messages when doing so accidentally. You mentioned short-hand syntaxes like this:

$obj = {

     foo: 1,
     bar: "hello",
     baz: true,

};

I would love for that, or some other short-hand, to be equivalent to this: $obj = new class(foo: 1, bar: "hello", baz: true) {

    public $foo;
    public $bar;
    public $baz;
    public function __construct($foo, $bar, $baz) {
       $this->foo  = $foo;
       $this->bar = $bar;
       $this->baz = $baz;
    }

} That is, an anonymous class, with exactly those three properties. If you *also* want to be able to define extra properties after it's created, you could opt into that using whatever mechanism a named class would (parent class, trait, attribute, etc; see other thread). Similarly, the objects created by json_decode or PDO_FETCH_OBJECT only need the *initial* properties to be dynamic, not to allow properties to be added later. Regards, -- Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]