> In generic case, you can't have internal state of an object, that's why it's internal
I know that things like internal state and read-only properties are possible for classes written in C, but those features aren't possible in PHP code - classes that behave this way are inconsistent with classes written in the language, and it becomes a problem in cases such as this. > If you need to serialize data, there are serialize/unserialize handlers for it. That is no help at all, when you're implementing a JSON serializer. You can see the class in question here: https://github.com/mindplay-dk/jsonfreeze/blob/master/mindplay/jsonfreeze/JsonSerializer.php Because DateTime does not behave like other classes, the only work-around is to explicitly handle DateTime with an if/instanceof-statement and handle that particular class explicitly. There are plenty of work-arounds - the point is that this class doesn't behave consistently with any other PHP class. On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 10:23 PM, Stanislav Malyshev <smalys...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi! > > > The object clearly has properties corresponding to it's internal state, > but > > reflection doesn't seem to report them? > > Reflection reports defined properties, but classes can have dynamic > properties that are not pre-defined. var_dump also has a separate > handler, so the object can present different information to var_dump. > > > Also, what comes out of var_dump() appears to be something intended for > > human consumption? I'm guessing that's not the actual internal state of > the > > object - most likely the internal state consists of the "timezone_type" > and > > an integer timestamp? > > In generic case, you can't have internal state of an object, that's why > it's internal. If you need to serialize data, there are > serialize/unserialize handlers for it. > > -- > Stas Malyshev > smalys...@gmail.com >
