Re: Re: [ZEND-ENGINE-CVS] cvs: ZendEngine2 / zend_API.c

All I want to be able to do is this: $s = simplexml_load_file('rss.xml'); foreach ($s->item as $item) { print htmlentities($item->title . "\n"); } That's not *all* I want to do, but this is my three-line test case. If we can figure out a way to make this work, then I'm a happy camper. I *don't* think it's realisitic to make a person explictly cast $item->title to a string here. That's not SimpleXML, that's ConfusingXML, particularly when this works perfectly fine: print $item->title; I can't imagine any user in the world understanding why one works and the other doesn't. Additionally, I don't think only supporting a print-only __toString() method is a good thing. That assumes we operate in a CLI context. In a Web context, people need to call htmlentities() on their data to ensure their HTML is valid and to prevent XSS attacks. A non-safe lazy default is asking for trouble. As to whether this type of magic should be allowed only in C extensions versus userland classes, is there a fundamental technical issue or are we only trying to prevent novices from shooting themselves in the foot? -adam On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Wez Furlong wrote: > I favour a), if you mean that (string)$com_object will work. > I'm not so bothered with userspace objects. > > b) is just wrong for overloaded objects; if we do some magic > and either hide an existing __toString() method, or call one > with the wrong parameters (it might implement one differently > to the way that we expect), then we end up in trouble. > > --Wez. > > > I think there are two options: > > a) Revert the cast operator patch and don't support automatic string > > conversion by PHP objects (i.e. allowing overloading extensions to support > > it). But you still shouldn't expect automagical conversions when passing > > COM objects to functions which accept strings as a parameter. > > b) Add a __toString() C API function and make $obj->__toString() call > that. > > It would mean that your COM example would look like > > serialize($com_object->__toString()). > > > > Personally, I prefer (b) but I think I can live with both. > > Note: In both cases you won't have automatic conversions. > > > > Andi > > > > > > > > -- adam@trachtenberg.com