Find out whether a method is protected or public

Question

With this code I'm trying to test if I can call certain functions

if (method_exists($this, $method))
    $this->$method();

however now I want to be able to restrict the execution if the $method is protected, what would I need to do?

Charles · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-24T06:25:10.343

7

You'll want to use Reflection.

class Foo { 
    public function bar() { } 
    protected function baz() { } 
    private function qux() { } 
}
$f = new Foo();
$f_reflect = new ReflectionObject($f);
foreach($f_reflect->getMethods() as $method) {
    echo $method->name, ": ";
    if($method->isPublic()) echo "Public\n";
    if($method->isProtected()) echo "Protected\n";
    if($method->isPrivate()) echo "Private\n";
}

Output:

bar: Public
baz: Protected
qux: Private

You can also instantiate the ReflectionMethod object by class and function name:

$bar_reflect = new ReflectionMethod('Foo', 'bar');
echo $bar_reflect->isPublic(); // 1

edited Mar 24 '11 at 06:25

answered Mar 24 '11 at 06:18

Charles

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Do I need to test whether the $method exists, or would is public be 0 if the method is undefined? – Moak Mar 24 '11 at 06:34
if you try to construct ReflectionMethod on a method that doesn't exist it will throw an exception. the first thing he did with `ReflectionObject` iterates thru existing methods, so thats not an issue – jon_darkstar Mar 24 '11 at 06:44
@Moak: You can use [`ReflectionObject::hasMethod`](http://us2.php.net/manual/en/reflectionclass.hasmethod.php) to test for method existence. This works *even for private methods* when checking outside of the class. – Charles Mar 24 '11 at 06:56

jon_darkstar · Answer 2 · 2011-03-24T06:41:50.993

You should use ReflectionMethod. You can use isProtected and isPublic as well as getModifiers

http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.reflectionmethod.php http://www.php.net/manual/en/reflectionmethod.getmodifiers.php

$rm = new ReflectionMethod($this, $method); //first argument can be string name of class or an instance of it.  i had get_class here before but its unnecessary
$isPublic = $rm->isPublic();
$isProtected = $rm->isProtected();
$modifierInt = $rm->getModifiers();
$isPublic2 = $modifierInt & 256; $isProtected2 = $modifierInt & 512;

As for checking whether or not the method exists, you can do it as you do now with method_exists or just attempt to construct the ReflectionMethod and an exception will be thrown if it doesn't exist. ReflectionClass has a function getMethods to get you an array of all of a class's methods if you'd like to use that.

Disclaimer - I don't know PHP Reflection too well, and there might be a more direct way to do this with ReflectionClass or something else

Find out whether a method is protected or public

2 Answers2