How handle visibility change of property in class when using serialized objects?

Question

UPDATE: As someone says this question is a bit unclear. I couldn't really understand it myself. But I did dig up the solution. It's a PHP bug that has been resolved. The server this legacy code runs on has an outdated php version.

Old code:

class MyChildClass extends MyBaseClass
{
    protected $myProp = "foo";
}

class MyBaseClass {
}

$myObject = new MyChildClass();

$myObjectS = serialize($myObject);

New code:

class MyChildClass extends MyBaseClass
{
}

class MyBaseClass {
    public $myProp;
}
// $myObjectS is the same as in the Old code above.
$myObject = unserialize($myObjectS);

This will result in an object with a protected property $myProp with a value of "foo". But there will also be a public property with the same name with an undefined value.

I really do not know how to fix this. The result I want is to have the objects public property populated with the serialized objects value for its protected property.

I would not design the code like this with the serialization of complete objects. But this is a legacy project where I (for the time being) have to deal with this.

Answer 1

Not easy as you'll have to change all the occurencies of protected properties in $myObjects.

In your example {s:7:"*myProp";s:3:"foo";} become {s:6:"myProp";s:3:"foo";}.
Set length of myProp from 7 to 6, and remove the leading star of *myProp. Lot of work if you have lot of protected properties :/