Sunday, May 1, 2011

PHP: Recommended replacement for deprecated call_user_method?

Since PHP's call_user_method and call_user_method_array are marked deprecated I'm wondering what alternative is recommended?

One way would be to use call_user_func, because by giving an array with an object and a method name as the first argument does the same like the deprecated functions. Since this function is not marked deprecated I assume the reason isn't the non-OOP-stylish usage of them?

The other way I can think of is using the Reflection API, which might be the most comfortable and future-oriented alternative. Nevertheless it's more code and I could image that it's slower than using the functions mentioned above.

What I'm interested in:

  • Is there a completely new technique for calling an object's methods by name?
  • Which is the fastest/best/official replacement?
  • What's the reason for deprecation?
From stackoverflow
  • As you said call_user_func can easily duplicate the behavior of this function. What's the problem?

    The call_user_method page even lists it as the alternative:

    <?php
    call_user_func(array($obj, $method_name), $parameter /* , ... */);
    call_user_func(array(&$obj, $method_name), $parameter /* , ... */); // PHP 4
    ?>
    

    As far as to why this was deprecated, this posting explains it:

    This is because the call_user_method() and call_user_method_array() functions can easily be duplicated by:

    old way:
    call_user_method($func, $obj, "method", "args", "go", "here");

    new way:
    call_user_func(array(&$obj, "method"), "method", "args", "go", "here");

    Personally, I'd probably go with the variable variables suggestion posted by Chad.

    okoman : No problem... I was just curious ;)
  • You could do it using variable variables, this looks the cleanest to me. Instead of:

    call_user_func(array($obj, $method_name), $parameter);
    

    You do:

    $obj->{$method_name}($parameter);
    

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