How to catch any method call on object in PHP?

Question

I am trying to figure out how to catch any method called on an object in PHP. I know about the magic function __call, but it is triggered only for methods that do not exist on the called object.

For example i have something like this:

class Foo
{
  public function bar()
  {
    echo 'foobar';
  }

  public function override($method_name,$method_args)
  {
    echo 'Calling method ',$method_name,'<br />';
    $this->$method_name($method_args); //dirty, but working
  }
}

And when i do this:

$foo = new Foo();
$foo->bar();

I want this output:

Calling method bar
foobar

instead of this one:

foobar

Is there any way how to do this? Help please :)

Answer 1

Taking your original Foo implementation you could wrap a decorator around it like this:

class Foo 
{
    public function bar() {
        echo 'foobar';
    }
}

class Decorator 
{
    protected $foo;

    public function __construct(Foo $foo) {
       $this->foo = $foo;
    }

    public function __call($method_name, $args) {
       echo 'Calling method ',$method_name,'<br />';
       return call_user_func_array(array($this->foo, $method_name), $args);
    }
}

$foo = new Decorator(new Foo());
$foo->bar();