PHP: Calling a function whenever a function in a child class is called

Question

Within a single class, I am able to use the _call/_callStatic functions to call a function before any function is actually run. However, I'm yet to find a solution that I can apply to the parent, and it will be inherited by the children.

The only method I can think of is putting a small snippet of code within each class that calls a function in the parent, which contains my code.

Are there any better solutions that I can implement?

Answer 1

As long as you are at least on php 5.4, you could use traits. http://php.net/traits

This will need some adjustments in your code but could allow the desired behavior. Do you have some more information on your use case? I think of logging from your description, is this correct?

Answer 2

Unfortunately there are not magic methods in PHP which get run whenever any method is called.

I think the solution you are looking for is a decorator, see this article for the tips on decorating methods / classes in PHP.

how to implement a decorator in PHP?

Answer 3

It's hard to help you without seeing some code. However, assuming that you don't re-define __call/__callStatic in the subclass, it should simply inherit the method from it's superclass.

If you do re-define __call/__callStatic in the subclass, it overrides the superclass' definition. So you'd somehow have to call the superclass' method. In order to do this you can use the parent keyword. See this example:

class SuperClass
{
    public function __call($name, $arguments)
    {
        // Do some stuff
    }
}

class SubClass extends SuperClass
{
    public function __call($name, $arguments)
    {
        // Execute the parent's __call() method
        return parent::__call($name, $arguments);

        // Do some extra stuff here
    }
}