What is the reflection mechanism of php?

What is reflection?

It refers to extending the analysis of PHP programs in the running state of PHP and exporting or extracting detailed information about classes, methods, properties, parameters, etc., including comments. This function of dynamically obtaining information and dynamically calling methods of objects is called reflection API. Reflection is an API for manipulating meta-models in the object-oriented paradigm. It is very powerful and can help us build complex and scalable applications.

Its uses include: automatically loading plug-ins, automatically generating documents, and can even be used to expand the PHP language.

The PHP reflection API consists of several classes that help us access the metadata of the program or interact with related annotations. With the help of reflection, we can obtain the methods implemented by the class, create an instance of the class (different from creating with new), call a method (also different from the regular call), pass parameters, and dynamically call the static methods of the class.

Reflection API is PHP's built-in OOP technology extension, including some classes, exceptions and interfaces. Used together, they can be used to help us analyze other classes, interfaces, methods, properties, methods and extensions. These oop extensions are called reflection.

Through ReflectionClass, we can get the following information of the Person class:

1) Constant Contents
2) Property Property Names
3) Method Names static
4) Properties Static Properties
5) Namespace Namespace
6) Whether the Person class is final or abstract

Example

class Person {
  /**
   * For the sake of demonstration, we"re setting this private
   */
  private $_allowDynamicAttributes = false;
  /** type=primary_autoincrement */
  protected $id = 0;
  /** type=varchar length=255 null */
  protected $name;
  /** type=text null */
  protected $biography;
    public function getId()
    {
      return $this->id;
    }
    public function setId($v)
    {
      $this->id = $v;
    }
    public function getName()
    {
      return $this->name;
    }
    public function setName($v)
    {
      $this->name = $v;
    }
    public function getBiography()
    {
      return $this->biography;
    }
    public function setBiography($v)
    {
      $this->biography = $v;
    }
}

Next to reflect it, just pass the class name "Person" to ReflectionClass:

$class = new ReflectionClass('Person');//建立 Person这个类的反射类
$instance = $class->newInstanceArgs($args);//相当于实例化Person 类

1) Get the attributes (Properties):

$properties = $class->getProperties();
foreach($properties as $property) {
  echo $property->getName()."\n";
}
// 输出:
// _allowDynamicAttributes
// id
// name
// biography

By default, ReflectionClass will obtain all properties, including private and protected ones. If you only want to get the private attribute, you need to pass an additional parameter:

$private_properties = $class->getProperties(ReflectionProperty::IS_PRIVATE);

Available parameter list:

ReflectionProperty:: IS_STATIC
ReflectionProperty::IS_PUBLIC
ReflectionProperty::IS_PROTECTED
ReflectionProperty::IS_PRIVATE

If you want to get both public and private properties, write like this: ReflectionProperty::IS_PUBLIC | ReflectionProperty ::IS_PROTECTED.

The property name can be obtained through $property->getName().

2) Get comments:

You can get the comments written to the property through getDocComment.

foreach($properties as $property) {
  if($property->isProtected()) {
    $docblock = $property->getDocComment();
    preg_match('/ type\=([a-z_]*) /', $property->getDocComment(), $matches);
    echo $matches[1]."\n";
  }
}
// Output:
// primary_autoincrement
// varchar
// text

3) Get the method of the class

Get the methods (methods): through getMethods() To get all methods of the class.

4) Execution class method:

$instance->getBiography(); //执行Person 里的方法getBiography
//或者：
$ec=$class->getmethod('getName'); //获取Person 类中的getName方法
$ec->invoke($instance);    //执行getName 方法

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