Making a PHP object behave like an array?

Question

I'd like to be able to write a PHP class that behaves like an array and uses normal array syntax for getting & setting.

For example (where Foo is a PHP class of my making):

$foo = new Foo();

$foo['fooKey'] = 'foo value';

echo $foo['fooKey'];

I know that PHP has the _get and _set magic methods but those don't let you use array notation to access items. Python handles it by overloading __getitem__ and __setitem__.

Is there a way to do this in PHP? If it makes a difference, I'm running PHP 5.2.

Answer 1

If you extend ArrayObject, or implement ArrayAccess then you can do what you want.

http://uk2.php.net/arrayobject

http://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/interfaceArrayAccess.html