Hello here! I'm a big fan of IoC too, and I think that PHP devs really need to have a look into Inversion of control. Adding this feature to PHP can be useful for providing a simple way to detect and manage the object creation process.
The "spl_factory_register" function allows to specify a manner to catch when a "new" occurs, and to add an alternative way to manage the creation of objects, by calling custom factories instead of using the built in "new" process. In fact, this method allow us to branch our objects managers (or dependency injection containers) on classes that don't implement inversion of control (like the widely used singleton pattern). This is huge ! However it's important to note that* this behavior can encourage some people to continue writing hard coupled classes*, and use don't us or think about inversion of control, letting the (service/object) container do the stuff for us. It can be really *dangerous*, and maybe attack the problem by the wrong side ? On a pragmatic point of view, *this is an actual need*, for sure. At least Richard and me have encountered theses problems (and I think many other people). This "spl_factory_register" would solve them in an elegant way. About what Eloy Bote said, I think that traits and IoC are two different concepts, both talking about code re-usability and good practices, and both needed. And, about the signature of the function itself, why not use a callback like in "spl_autoload_register" function ? Best regards -- Alexis Métaireau 06 20 15 55 24 | 35 rue Léo Lagrange, 31400 Toulouse | http://www.notmyidea.org
