__autocreate() function for non-existing variables

php.internals

Vesselin Atanasov

23 years ago
Hello. I think that it would be useful to allow an __autocreate() function create non-existing variables just like __autoload is called for non-existing classes. The function will be called when an attempt is made to read a non-existent variable. It will return a reference to the new variable it creates. This could be very useful in some cases. For example it could be used in a php library that creates a database object. When some function tries to use the database object, the __autocreate function will check if a global database object exists. If it does not exist the function will create the database object as global and in either case return a reference to the object. I am willing to implement this functionality, but I'd like to hear the opinion of the PHP developers first and especially of the Zend2 team because this functionality will modify the Zend2 engine. vesselin

Zeev Suraski

23 years ago
I don't see need for this magic. You can implement this using a simple singleton pattern, if you need it. I don't think we want to add features that will condone the use of globals, a singleton class is a much better solution for that. Zeev At 06:10 20/08/2003, Vesselin Atanasov wrote: