Allowing multiple arguments in any order in PHP

I have a function which takes in about 10 arguments, in which most of them are optional. I was wondering if I could implement it in such a way that the user of the function does not need to bother with the order of the parameters. For example:

public function foo($arg1, $arg2, $arg3='',$arg4='', $arg5='', $arg6='', $arg7=''){}

Now, when I use this function I can simply

$this->foo($arg1val, $arg2val, $arg6val);

Is there a way in php to do so?

Here is how I implemented this: I've listed the parameters accepted by the function in the API, so the user can pass the parameters in any order in an array with key=>value pairs.

For example:

public function argumentsFilter($origParams, $newParams){
    $tmpArr = array();
        foreach ($origParams as $origKey){
        foreach($newPar开发者_开发问答ams as $newKey => $newVal){
                    if($newKey == $origKey){
                $tmpArr[$origKey] = $newVal;
                    }
        }
        if(empty($tmpArr[$origKey])){
                    $tmpArr[$origKey] = '';
        }
           }
        return $tmpArr;
}

public function foo($arg1, $arg2, $arg=array()){

    $validArgList = array('arg3', 'arg4', 'arg5', 'arg6', 'arg7');

    $correctedArgList = $this->argumentsFilter($validArgList, $arg);   

}

Is there a more elegant way to do this?

10 parameters for a function is clearly too much. Pass arrays instead:

function foo(array $params) {
    $defaults = array('foo' => true, 'bar' => false, ...);
    $params = array_intersect_key($params, $defaults) + $defaults;

    // work with $params['foo']
    // maybe extract($params)
}

This example shows a function that accepts an arbitrary number of "named parameter" in any order, filters invalid values and establishes defaults values.

It is not possible, since php doesn't support named arguments.

You have 2 choices: to use array or to redesign your function so it has fewer parameters (the latter is preferred).

There are many ways to do that, but I recommend this method:

function doSomething($required, /*optional*/ $arguments = array()) {
    $arguments = array_merge(array(
        // set defaults
        "argument" => "default value", 
    ), $arguments); 

    var_dump($arguments);
}

It is very clean and easy to understand.