List all methods of a given class, excluding parent class's methods in PHP

Question

I'm building a unit testing framework for PHP and I was curious if there is a way to get a list of an objects methods which excludes the parent class's methods. So given this:

class Foo
{

    public function doSomethingFooey()
    {
        echo 'HELLO THERE!';
    }
}

class Bar extends Foo
{
    public function goToTheBar()
    {
        // DRINK!
    }
}

I want a function which will, given the parameter new Bar() return:

array( 'goToTheBar' );

WITHOUT needing to instantiate an instance of Foo. (This means get_class_methods will not work)/

Answer 1

$class_methods = get_class_methods('Bar');

From the PHP Documenation

This will not instantiate the class, and will allow you to get an array of all of the classes methods.

I'm not completely certain that this won't return parent class methods, but get_class_methods will work for uninstantiated classes. If it does, you can use Alix's answer to remove the parent's method from the array. Or Lukman's to use the reverse engineering aspect of PHP internal code base to get the methods.

---

BTW, if you type in new Bar(), it is going to create a new instance of Foo, as Bar extends Foo. The only way you can not instantiate Foo is by referring to it statically. Therefore, your request:

I want a function which will, given the parameter new Bar() return:

Has no possible solution. If you give new Bar() as an argument, it will instantiate the class.

Answer 2

Use ReflectionClass, for example:

$f = new ReflectionClass('Bar');
$methods = array();
foreach ($f->getMethods() as $m) {
    if ($m->class == 'Bar') {
        $methods[] = $m->name;
    }
}
print_r($methods);

Answer 3

You can use get_class_methods() without instantiating the class:

$class_name - The class name or an object instance.

So the following would work:

$bar_methods = array_diff(get_class_methods('Bar'), get_class_methods('Foo'));

Assuming there aren't repeated methods in the parent class. Still, Lukman's answer does a better job. =)