This is handy for accessing private methods but remember that things are normally private for a reason! Unit Testing is one (debatable) use case for this.
Example:
<?php
class Foo {
private function myPrivateMethod() {
return 7;
}
}
$method = new ReflectionMethod('Foo', 'myPrivateMethod');
$method->setAccessible(true);
echo $method->invoke(new Foo);
// echos "7"
?>
This works nicely with PHPUnit: http://php.net/manual/en/reflectionmethod.setaccessible.php
ReflectionMethod::setAccessible
(PHP 5 >= 5.3.2, PHP 7, PHP 8)
ReflectionMethod::setAccessible — Set method accessibility
Description
Enables invoking of a protected or private method via the ReflectionMethod::invoke() method.
Note: As of PHP 8.1.0, calling this method has no effect; all methods are invokable by default.
Parameters
-
accessible -
trueto allow accessibility, orfalse.
Return Values
No value is returned.
Examples
Example #1 Simple Class definition
<?php
class MyClass
{
private function foo()
{
return 'bar';
}
}
$method = new ReflectionMethod("MyClass", "foo");
$method->setAccessible(true);
$obj = new MyClass();
echo $method->invoke($obj);
echo $obj->foo();
?>The above example will output something similar to:
bar Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to private method MyClass::foo() from global scope in /in/qdaZS:16
See Also
- ReflectionMethod::isPrivate() - Checks if method is private
- ReflectionMethod::isProtected() - Checks if method is protected
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User Contributed Notes 1 note
dave1010 at gmail dot com ¶
13 years ago
