PHP5 Chaining variable - Snippet/Tutorial

[xnowandtheworldx]

Alright, since the depository is read only I'll just post this here .

 

I had one hell of a time trying to figure out how I might be able to display variables via method chaining in PHP5 and I couldn't really find anything anywhere about it except for chaining methods, so...I decided to post this just in case someone else might be wondering .

 

What am I talking about exactly?

With the MySQLi class you can echo rows like so...

$db = new MySQLi('localhost','username','password','database');
$q = 'SELECT * FROM table';

if($result = $db->query($q)) {

    while($row = $db->fetch_object($result)) {
        echo $row->mysql_column_name //this is what I'm talking about....
    }

}

 

This is how I was able to do it...

class ClassName
{

    private $array; //set up a variable to store our array

    /* 
     * You can set your own array or use the default one
     * it will set the $this->array variable to whatever array is given in the construct
     * How the array works like a database; array('column_name' => 'column_data')
     */
    function __construct($array = array('fruit' => 'apple', 'vegetable' => 'cucumber')) {
        $this->array = $array;
    }

    /*
     * Loops through the array and sets new variables within the class
     * it returns $this so that you may chain the method.
     */
    public function execute() {

        foreach($this->array AS $key => $value) {
            $this->$key = $value; //we create a variable within the class
        }

        return $this; //we return $this so that we can chain our method....
    }

}

 

That's all there is to this example class, now on how to use it.

 

$chaining = new ClassName(array('website' => 'phpfreaks.com', 'rating' => 'awesome!')); //set up
echo $chaining->execute()->website,'<br/>'; //will print 'phpfreaks.com' followed by a break

//or you could do it this way
$vars = $chaining->execute();
echo $vars->website,'<br/>'; //will print 'phpfreaks.com' followed by a break
echo $vars->rating; //will print 'awesome!'

 

I hope this helps anyone that might be having problems this is the first tutorial I have ever tried to write lol, so I hope it's clear enough. Point out any errors, and any ways in which it might be able to be improved. Add on to it if you'd like.

[trq]

Um, this is pretty standard stuff.

[xnowandtheworldx]

Um, this is pretty standard stuff.

 

Yes, I know it's standard stuff. The point was I had tried to figure out on how to do it, but, of course, I didn't know until about...5 days ago that you could create new variables on the fly inside of a class. There were no other explanations for this, so if it could help someone out that was stuck, like me, then that's all I wanted to do.