Dynamically create PHP object based on string

Question

I would like to create an object in PHP based on a type defined by a string in a MySQL database. The database table has columns and sample data of:

Answer 1

as silkfire says, this can be achieved by using PDO specific modes, so here is an example. Using your same database values and defined objects:

 id | type | propertyVal
----+------+-------------
  1 | foo  | lorum
  2 | bar  | ipsum

class ParentClass {...}
class Foo extends ParentClass {private $id, $propertyVal; ...}
class Bar extends ParentClass {private $id, $propertyVal; ...} 
//...(more classes)...

with a single query (you must name the field containing the class name first):

$stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT type,id,propertyVal FROM table WHERE id=1');
$stmt->execute();
$foo = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_CLASS | PDO::FETCH_CLASSTYPE);
var_dump($foo); // $foo is a newly created object of class foo, with properties named like and containing the value of subsequent fields

this is cool but it gets cooler with a while

$stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT type,id,propertyVal FROM table');
$stmt->execute();
while ($object = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_CLASS | PDO::FETCH_CLASSTYPE))
 {var_dump($object);} // here all desired objects, dynamically constructed accordingly to the first column returned by the query

you can define a constructor (which will be called after the values from database are assigned to properties) to work on those dynamically assigned properties, say by replacing a string with it's uppercased value

class foo
 {function __construct ()
   {$this->uper = strtoupper($this->propertyVal);}}