CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpproperties
Siddharth Thevaril
Siddharth Thevaril

Reputation: 3798

why does PHP allow creating class properties from outside the class?

Coming from a Java background, I find this odd. Please have a look at this code -

<?php  
    class People {
        private $name;
        private $age;
        public function set_info($name, $age) {
            $this->name = $name;
            $this->age = $age;
        }

        public function get_info() {
            echo "Name : {$this->name}<br />";
            echo "Age : {$this->age}<br />";
        }
    }

    $p1 = new People();
    $p1->set_info("Sam",22);
    $p1->get_info();

    $p1->ID = 12057;

    echo "<pre>".print_r($p1,true)."</pre>";
?>

OUTPUT :

People Object
(
    [name:People:private] => Sam
    [age:People:private] => 22
    [ID] => 12057
)

Having not created any property as ID in the People class, yet I can assign a value to ID outside the class using p1.

In Java, this would give an error -

cannot find symbol

Is this a feature in PHP? If it is then what is it called? And how is it beneficial?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 187

Answers (1)

2hamed
2hamed

Reputation: 9067

Since PHP is a dynamically typed scripting language it allows for Dynamic Properties. I refer you to this this article.

Languages like JavaScript and Python allow object instances to have dynamic properties. As it turns out, PHP does too. Looking at the official PHP documentation on objects and classes you might be lead to believe dynamic instance properties require custom __get and __set magic methods. They don't.

Upvotes: 5

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