Archive for the 'Tips' Category

I was confident that using one of php5′s magic methods, __toString() would just work, but the fact is that the following code works in php version 5.2.1 but not in 5.1.6:

You can try this for yourself:

<?php

class ToStringTest {
	protected $content;

	public function __construct($content) {
		$this->content = $content;
	}

	public function add($content) {
		$this->content .= $content;
	}

	public function __toString() {
		return $this->content;
	}
}

$A = new ToStringTest('Hello, ');
$A->add('World!');
echo $A . "\n";

$
$B = new ToStringTest('Say ');
$B->add( $A );
echo $B . "\n";

?>

In php 5.2.1, output is:

Hello, World!
Say Hello, World!

and in php 5.1.6

Hello, World!
Say Object id #1

And then it hit me:

It is worth noting that before PHP 5.2.0 the __toString method was only called when it was directly combined with echo() or print().

Small piece of advise: always be sure to know what is a certain function’s behavior in the possible php versions your code will be running, or risk bad surprises.

Meanwhile… use something like

$SomeObject->_toString();