This article was originally created by Emilien Vuillaume (Left our team)
With Object Oriented Programmation, it is often useful to display an object quickly and easily.
The PHP langage has a magic object method to do that :
class Object{ public function __toString() { }}
This method, if it is defined, will be automatically called (magic !) when the Object is displayed.
It’s nice, no ? But if your Php version is prior to 5.2, the magic method is not called !
Example :
class Car{ public $color;
public function __construct($color = 'white') { $this->color = $color; }
public function __toString() { return $this->color . ' car'; }}
$Car = new Car();$redCar = new Car('red');
echo "There is a " . $Car . " and a " . $redCar;
In Php 5.2.1 :
There is a white car and a red car
But with Php before 5.2 :
There is a Object #1 and a Object #2
So, to be sure of the behavior of your script, you can call directly the __toString() method.
This issue only affects string concatenation.
Prior to PHP 5.2, the __toString() method is called only when the object is printed directly.
So the following will work, even if that’s ugly… ; )
print ‘There is a ‘;
print $Car;
print ‘ and a ‘;
print $redCar;