Tracking function instances

Question

OK so is there a way in php do track function calls such as

function Tracker($name,$returnedValue,$file,$line)
{
   echo $name . '() was called and returned a ' . typeof(returnedValue);
}

function test(){}

test();

The reason for this is to send a custom framework data type back so another example would be

$resource = fopen('php://stdin'); //This would return an instance of (Object)Resource.

if($resource->type == 'fopen')
{
    //Code
}

I have never seen anyway to do this but does anyone know if it is possible ?

Answer 1

Not really. Xdebug is able to log function calls though: http://xdebug.org/docs/execution_trace

Answer 2

Maybe you want something like Observer pattern? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_pattern

Answer 3

It's not possible to do this using just PHP, a debugger might help, however you could wrap the function:

function wrapper()
{
    $args=func_get_args();
    $function=array_shift($args);
    $returned=call_user_func_array($function, $args);
    print "$function (" . var_export($args, true) . ") = " 
         . var_export($returned, true) . "\n";
    return $returned;
}

$value=wrapper('test_fn', 1 ,2 ,3, 'something');
$value=wrapper('mysql_connect');

I don't understand your explanation of what you are trying to achieve here.

C.