Documentation

The set() method makes it easy to set a bunch of properties at once. It is especially useful when creating an object from a row of data retrieved from the database.

The magic methods __set(), __get(), __isset(), and __unset() provided by this trait call customPropertySet(), customPropertyGet(), customPropertyIsset(), and customPropertyUnset(), respectively. This is so that classes that use this trait but need to create their own magic methods can still use the functionality that this trait provides.

Classes that implement this trait can optionally define a protected property named $prop_aliases, which sets alternative names for any arbitrary subset of the class's properties. Then this trait will automatically map those aliases to the properties' canonical names. This is useful if the names of database columns do not match those of the related property names, or if old versions of SMF used different names in different places for the same value.

For the most part, $prop_aliases is just a simple set of key-value pairs that take the form 'property_alias' => 'property_name'. However, there are three special cases to be aware of:

• If '!' is prepended to the property_name, then the property_alias value will be treated like the boolean inverse of the real property's value.

  For example, if $prop_aliases looks like this:

  protected array $prop_aliases = array(
      'is_logged' => '!is_guest',
  );
  

  ... then getting the value of the virtual $this->is_logged will get the opposite of the real $this->is_guest, and trying to set the value of $this->is_logged to true will actually just set $this->is_guest to false.

• Square brackets in the property_name indicate that the alias should point to the value of an element within a property that is an array.

  For example, if $prop_aliases looks like this:

  protected array $prop_aliases = array(
      'website_url' => 'website[url]',
  );
  

  ... then $this->website_url becomes an alias for $this->website['url'].

• If property_name is the name of a callable, then getting the property's value will return the result of executing the callable. Attempts to set or unset a callable property are ignored. Checking whether the property is set will simply check whether the callable returns a non-null value.

  For example, if $prop_aliases looks like this:

  protected array $prop_aliases = array(
      'foo' => __CLASS__ . '::getFoo',
  );
  

  ... then getting $this->foo will get the value returned by the class's getFoo() method. The callable must be a static method in order to keep PHP happy. The current object will be passed to the callable as its first argument.