Implicit Type Conversion for PHP Classes?

Question

Is there a way to tell the php complier that I want a specific implicit conversion from one type to another?

A simple example:

class Integer
{
  public $         


        

Answer 1

Long answer:

I think it is very difficult (read impossible) for PHP to do an implicit conversion in this case.

Remember: the fact that you call your class Integer is a hint to the human reader of the code, PHP does not understand that it actually is used to hold an integer. Also, the fact that it has an attribute called $val is a hint to a human reader that it should probably contain the value of your integer. Again PHP does not understand your code, it only executes it.

At some point in your code you should do an explicit conversion. It might be possible that PHP has some nice syntactig sugar for that, but a first attempt would be something like:

class Integer
{
  public $val;

  function __construct($val) { $this->val = $val; }
}

function ExampleFunc($i){
    if (is_numeric($i)) { $iObj = new Integer($i); }
    ...
}

ExamFunc(333); // 333 -> Integer object with $val === 333.

This is not as cool as you would like it, but again, it is possible that PHP has some syntactic sugar that will hide the explicit conversion more or less.

Short version:

In one way or another, you will need an explicit conversion