is there way for programmatically storing an 'address' of properties for an objects in PHP?

Suppose I have an o开发者_StackOverflowbject in PHP $o, about which I can get $o->a->b, or maybe $0->c['d'].

Is there a way of storing these as sort of address for handling elsewhere?

What I have is that at several different places I need to process different properties of the object, but in the same way.

So what I'd like to do is build a collection of addresses as I go along, and then hand them all to a single function which goes through them all and does the processing.

Eg:

$o->a = 'red';

$o->b->c = 'red';

$o->d['e'] = 'red';

... and I want to change all 'red' to 'green', but those particular keys and properties may change depending on circumstances.

You can do this:

$propertyName = 'a';
$o->$propertyName = 'green';

But not this:

$propertyName = 'b->c';
$o->$propertyName = 'green';

Alternatively, you can create references to the variables, like this:

$a[] = & $o->a;
$a[] = & $o->b->c;
$a[] = & $o->d['e'];

foreach ($a as $key => $color) {
    $a[$key] = 'green';
}

Per Manual: Variable variables:

<?php
class foo {
    var $bar = 'I am bar.';
}

$foo = new foo();

$f = 'foo';
$b = 'bar';
echo $$f->$b;

So you could make a chain with property names:

<?php
class CB { var $c = 'whee'; }
class CO { var $b; }
$o = new CO();
$o->b = new CB();

// normal access
echo $o->b->c;

// variable access
$chain = array( 'o', 'b', 'c' ); // for $o->b->c
$obj = ${ array_shift( $chain ) };

while ( sizeof( $chain ) > 1 ) {
    $obj = $obj->{ array_shift( $chain ) };
}

echo $obj->{ $chain[0] };

A little advice...

Public properties of any object can cause you all manner of problems. It may be that what ever you are doing really does require it but I would suggest you use getters and setters in your class and call these properties elsewhere.

You then control what can be changed and how it can be changed.