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Why do PHP magical methods have to be public?

I use magical methods in my PHP classes but when i try to put them private, I'm warned :

WARN: The magic method __get() must have public visibility and cannot be static in ...

I wouldn't like to have these methods in Eclipse auto completion. (maybe a way with phpdoc ?) So my question is, why must these methods be public ?

Solution

  • Because you are invoking the methods from a scope outside of the class.

    For example:

    // this can be any class with __get() and __set methods
$YourClass = new YourOverloadableClass();

// this is an overloaded property
$YourClass->overloaded = 'test';

    The above code is "converted" to:

    $YourClass->__set('overloaded', 'test');

    Later when you get the property value like:

    $var = $YourClass->overloaded;

    This code is "converted" to:

    $YourClass->__get('overloaded');

    In each case the magic method, __get and __set, are being invoked from outside the class so those methods will need to be public.