How to get protected property of object in PHP

Question

I have a object having some protected property that I want to get and set. The object looks like

Fields_Form_Element_Location Object
(
[helper] => formText
[_allowEmpty:protected] => 1
[_autoInsertNotEmptyValidator:protected] => 1
[_belongsTo:protected] => 


[_description:protected] => 
[_disableLoadDefaultDecorators:protected] => 
[_errorMessages:protected] => Array
    (
    )

[_errors:protected] => Array
    (
    )
[_isErrorForced:protected] => 
[_label:protected] => Current City


[_value:protected] => 93399
[class] => field_container field_19 option_1 parent_1
)

I want to get value property of the object. When I try $obj->_value or $obj->value it generates error. I searched and found the solution to use PHP Reflection Class. It worked on my local but on server PHP version is 5.2.17 So I cannot use this function there. So any solution how to get such property?

Answer 1

Here's the really simple example (with no error checking) of how to use ReflectionClass:

function accessProtected($obj, $prop) {
  $reflection = new ReflectionClass($obj);
  $property = $reflection->getProperty($prop);
  $property->setAccessible(true);
  return $property->getValue($obj);
}

I know you said you were limited to 5.2, but that was 2 years ago, 5.5 is the oldest supported version and I'm hoping to help people with modern versions.