Does PHP have an answer to Java style class generics?

Question

Upon building an MVC framework in PHP I ran into a problem which could be solved easily using Java style generics. An abstract Controller class might look something like thi

Answer 1

My workaround is the following:

/**
 * Generic list logic and an abstract type validator method.
 */    
abstract class AbstractList {
    protected $elements;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->elements = array();
    }

    public function add($element) {
        $this->validateType($element);
        $this->elements[] = $element;
    }

    public function get($index) {
        if ($index >= sizeof($this->elements)) {
            throw new OutOfBoundsException();
        }
        return $this->elements[$index];
    }

    public function size() {
        return sizeof($this->elements);
    }

    public function remove($element) {
        validateType($element);
        for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($this->elements); $i++) {
            if ($this->elements[$i] == $element) {
               unset($this->elements[$i]);
            }
        }
    }

    protected abstract function validateType($element);
}


/**
 * Extends the abstract list with the type-specific validation
 */
class MyTypeList extends AbstractList {
    protected function validateType($element) {
        if (!($element instanceof MyType)) {
            throw new InvalidArgumentException("Parameter must be MyType instance");
        }
    }
}

/**
 * Just an example class as a subject to validation.
 */
class MyType {
    // blahblahblah
}


function proofOfConcept(AbstractList $lst) {
    $lst->add(new MyType());
    $lst->add("wrong type"); // Should throw IAE
}

proofOfConcept(new MyTypeList());

Though this still differs from Java generics, it pretty much minimalizes the extra code needed for mimicking the behaviour.

Also, it is a bit more code than some examples given by others, but - at least to me - it seems to be more clean (and more simliar to the Java counterpart) than most of them.

I hope some of you will find it useful.

Any improvements over this design are welcome!