http://www.phpfi.com/382350

:)

// Win

No idea how your supposed to get code displaying nicely here

I understand that I misread the article and you are simply trying to show that parsing a serialized string is easier than formatting the output from print_r().

That being the case, I’d like to re-emphasize that this kind of debugging is aided and enhanced greatly by the xdebug extension, which comes with a nice feature to format the var_dump() output for you with nice HTML and pretty colors. (among many other much more powerful features.)

Don’t get reflexively defensive. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the basis of this article is: print_r() does not print out private and protected variables of an object. Hence the need for this class you wrote. Correct?

Defensive? I find your tone borderline rude, but to let you have the benefit of doubt, I’ll answer none the less.

No, my assertion was the opposite — Namely that print_r is able to do something that is impossible through the reflection API — At least until 5.3.0 comes out. What I wanted to do, was to generate some pretty HTML representation of variables, rather than the text-based output from print_r. Something similar to this for example.

I was pointing out that this assertion about print_r() is not true.

Let’s try an example, this will be using PHP 5.2.4:

class AClass
{
    protected $pro2;
    private $pri2;
    function __construct() {
        $this->pro2 = "parent class protected var";
        $this->pri2 = "parent class private var";
    }
}

class MyClass extends AClass
{
    public $pub;
    private $pri;
    protected $pro;
    function __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->pub = "public var";
        $this->pri = "private var";
        $this->pro = "protected var";
    }
}

$c = new MyClass();

print_r($c);
exit;

MyClass Object
(
    [pub] => public var
    [pri:private] => private var
    [pro:protected] => protected var
    [pro2:protected] => parent class protected var
    [pri2:private] => parent class private var
)

Explain how that is substantively different than the output of your class’s export() method:

Array
(
    [type] => object
    [id] => 1
    [class] => MyClass
    [value] => Array
        (
            [pub] => Array
                (
                    [type] => string
                    [id] => 2
                    [value] => public var
                )

            [private:pri] => Array
                (
                    [type] => string
                    [id] => 3
                    [value] => private var
                )

            [protected:pro] => Array
                (
                    [type] => string
                    [id] => 4
                    [value] => protected var
                )

            [protected:pro2] => Array
                (
                    [type] => string
                    [id] => 5
                    [value] => parent class protected var
                )

            [private:pri2] => Array
                (
                    [type] => string
                    [id] => 6
                    [value] => parent class private var
                )

        )

)

@Josh Johnston
I probably should have mentioned explicitly, but this class just generates an array structure, which describes the variable. This can subsequently be transformed into html or any other kind of output. I left that part out though, since it’s rather trivial. One use case could be to json-encode the structure and send it to the Firebug console. Try the following, to see what I mean:

$x = new XrayVision();
print_r($x->export($x));

Which will give you:

Array
(
    [type] => object
    [id] => 1
    [class] => XrayVision
    [value] => Array
        (
            [protected:id] => Array
                (
                    [type] => integer
                    [id] => 2
                    [value] => 1
                )

        )

)

@Nick
Burden of proof? I didn’t know I was on trial.

@Tarh
Thanks, though I don’t think it’s fair to judge the entire PHP community on the grounds of one raging madman.