Doctrine 2 Whats the Recommended Way to Access Properties?

Question

I remember reading that in Doctrine 2 models, I should not set properties/fields public. How then would you expose these fields? The sandbox used get*() & set*() methods. Is that the best idea? Its very cumbersome. Using magic methods __get() __set() will make things similar to setting fields public?

Whats your recommendation?

Answer 1

Here's why you can't use public properties: How can public fields “break lazy loading” in Doctrine 2?

You are correct that __get() and __set() can make accessing the protected/private fields easier.

Here's a simple example:

public function __get($name)
{
  if(property_exists($this, $name)){
    return $this->$name;
  }
}

Of course that gives access to all the properties. You could put that in a class that all your entities extended, then define non-assessable fields as private. Or you could use an array to determine which properties should be accessible:$this->accessable = array('name', 'age')

There are plenty of ways to keep all properties protected and still have a reasonably easy way to get/set them.