Sophisticated Object Iterators in PHP

In my previous post, Simple Object Iterators in PHP, we discovered how to iterate over array items defined within an object using a foreach loop. However, what if you need to iterate over items which are not stored in an array, e.g. records from a database or lines of text read from a file?

For the following example, we’ll create a class which:

1. counts the number of users who are logged in to a web application by retrieving records from a database
2. creates a collection of “user” objects which can be iterated with a foreach loop.

Ultimately, we want to be able to run simple code such as:

$loggedin = new LoggedIn();

// count users
echo '<p>', count($loggedin), ' user(s) are currently logged in:</p>';

// iterate over users
foreach ($loggedin as $rec => $user) {
	echo
		'Record ', $rec,
		':   ID=', $user->id, 
		' Email=', $user->email,
		'<br/>';
}

First, we’ll define a basic class which stores the ID and email address for a single user. An instance of this class will be returned when we iterate over logged in users:

class User
{
	public $id, $email;
}

We now require a LoggedIn class which handles a collection of users who have logged in. Note that the class will implement both the Countable and Iterator interfaces:

class LoggedIn implements Countable, Iterator
{

	private $rec;		// database recordset
	private $cursor;		// number of current record
	private $item;		// current user in the collection

The constructor will immediately call a private FetchLoggedIn() method which runs a database query:

	// constructor
	public function __construct() {
		$this->FetchLoggedIn();
	}
	
	
	// fetch logged in user records
	private function FetchLoggedIn() {
	
		$this->cursor = -1;
		$this->item = null;
	
		// find logged-in users
		$db = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=dbname', 'dbuser', 'dbpass');
		$this->rec = $db->Prepare(
			'SELECT id, email FROM `user` WHERE loggedin=1;', 
			array(PDO::ATTR_CURSOR => PDO::CURSOR_FWDONLY)
		);
		
		// convert returned records to a User object
		$this->rec->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_INTO, new User());
		
		// run query
		$this->rec->execute();
	
	}

Note:

• $this->cursor is the current record number (zero based). It’s initially set to -1 because we haven’t retrieved any records.
• $this->item will hold the current User object.
• $this->rec is the set of records (if any) returned from our SQL query.
• The $this->rec->setFetchMode line sets the default PDO fetch mode. When we fetch a row, a new instance of the User class is returned with the $id and $email properties mapped to the record.

Since our class implements Countable, we must create a public method named count() which returns the number items in the collection — in this case, the number of rows returned by our SQL query:

	public function count() {
		return $this->rec->rowCount();
	}

We now require 5 public methods which implement Iterator functionality. The first is confusingly named rewind(). It is called when the foreach loop starts and should “rewind” to the first item in the collection:

	public function rewind() {
		if ($this->cursor >= 0) $this->FetchLoggedIn();
		$this->next();
	}

This code checks whether one or more records has already been returned. If it has, we run the SQL query again since we’ve created a forward-only recordset.

The following line calls next() — our second Iterator method:

	public function next() {
		$this->cursor++;
		$this->item = $this->rec->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ORI_NEXT);
	}

This method is called during each iteration of the foreach loop. It increments $this->cursor, fetches the next row from the recordset, and creates a new User object which is assigned to $this->item.

The next two Iterator methods are named current() and key() which return the current collection item (a User object) and record number respectively:

	public function current() {
		return $this->item;
	}


	public function key() {
		return $this->cursor;
	}

Finally, we require a public valid() method. This is called immediately after the foreach loop executes rewind() or next() — it must return true if an item is available:

	public function valid() {
		return ($this->cursor < $this->count());
    }
// end of class definition
}

Our class is complete and we can count or iterate over logged-in users using the code at the top of this article.

I hope you found this series useful and consider Iterators the next time you create an object which contains a collection of items.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about PHP Object Iterators