Re: Property Accessors 1.2 : parent::$foo Issue

Why we must have parent property access at all? What's the use case and how do other langs do it? Am I right to say there is no "parent property", this would just call the parent's [gs]etter using the same underlying property value? Steve -- http://www.mrclay.org/ On Jan 10, 2013, at 6:15 PM, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 4:25 AM, Clint Priest <cpriest@zerocue.com> wrote: > >> Agreed. Some people may actually be using $parent as a variable name, not >> difficult to imagine. >> >> So far parent->foo seems to be the answer. >> >> -Clint > > My thoughts on the parent situations, as I'm not yet satisfied with the > current solution. > > 1) I tried to understand how the engine currently compiles and executes > object property fetches. I found it to be incredibly complex and I > certainly don't have the abilities to port this for statics. As such the > "parent::$foo" syntax is dead unless someone else is going to do the > necessary engine changes. > > 2) I think the "parent->foo" syntax is nice in concept, but I think that > it's an absolute no-go as it doesn't fit in with the rest of PHP (and would > still require some engine changes those complexity I can't really > estimate). The parent->foo syntax is some off mix between parent::$foo > (which makes sense) and $parent->foo (which also makes sense). parent->foo > combines it in an odd way that doesn't look like PHP and adds yet another > new syntax for something that's going to be a rare case anyway. > > 3) My suggestion is to avoid the engine and syntax related issues of parent > property access by putting this as a function in the standard library > instead. What I'm thinking about is a function like get_parent_property() > which returns the ReflectionProperty for it. Then you could do something > like this: > > public $foo { > get { return 'parent is: ' . > get_parent_property('foo')->getValue(); } > set($val) { get_parent_property('foo')->setValue($val . ' > something'); } > } > > I know that this is not an optimal solution, but I would much prefer this > over some new syntax like "parent->foo". Once (if) static properties have > better engine support we can switch to the cleaner parent::$foo way. But > until then I think that this is a good compromise, especially considering > that accessing the parent property shouldn't be a very common operation, so > it's okay if it's a bit more verbose. > > This is just a rough idea of what I'd do. The exact way this would work > still needs further discussion. E.g. one could make passing the property > name optional and assume the current property as default. Or one could not > return a ReflectionProperty and instead provide two functions > get_parent_property and set_parent_property (what about isset and unset in > that case though?) > > So, what do you think about this? > > Nikita