Is it a proper way to access a private function in cakePHP

Question

Hi all,

In a controller, I got two functions that one is made to be private:

function toavail(){ 
             $this->autoRender=false;                
             $result2=$this->__avail();                  
              if($result2==0){return "OK";}
              else{return 0;}                                                  
        }

function __avail(){  
              $result1=$this->Site1->findByusername('1');  
               if($result1){
                return 1;
                            }
               else{
                 return 0;
                   }
        } 

I am not sure if it is a proper way to access the private function in this case.

Answer 1

You're accessing it correctly (assuming that both methods are in the same controller class), but in case you're not aware, your __avail() method isn't really private. The double underscore (__) prefix is something of a convention, but it's only a convention. Your "private" method is really public in actuality. To make it private you need to specify it as such in the signature:

private function __avail() { ... }