views:

250

answers:

2

If Ruby gets invited to a party and brings:

foobarobject.send('foomethod') 

.. and Python gets invited to the same party and brings:

getattr(foobarobject, 'foomethod')()

.. what does PHP have to bring to the party?

Bonus question: If Ruby and Python got jealous of PHP's party-favors, what English terms would they search for in PHP's documentation in order to talk about it behind PHP's back?

+5  A: 

PHP brings this:

$foobarobject->{"foomethod"}();

... and the coke and chips.

EDIT:

Although the term for the above is variable variables there is nothing specifically talking about doing it to an object in the manual. However, you can achieve the same thing with call_user_func:

call_user_func(array($foobarobject, "foomethod"));
Paolo Bergantino
PHP is grim....
Aiden Bell
+3  A: 

Using variable to hold the method name. Pretty much the same as Paolo's first example, but maybe not so obvious unless you know about it.

$method = "foomethod";
$foobarobject->$method();

You also got the Reflection classes.

$method = new ReflectionMethod('Foobar', 'foomethod');
$method->invoke(null);
OIS