Is there any way to set a private/protected static property using reflection classes?

dqhendricks picture dqhendricks · Jun 23, 2011 · Viewed 28.2k times · Source

I am trying to perform a backup/restore function for static properties of classes. I can get a list of all of the static properties and their values using the reflection objects getStaticProperties() method. This gets both private and public static properties and their values.

The problem is I do not seem to get the same result when trying to restore the properties with the reflection objects setStaticPropertyValue($key, $value) method. private and protected variables are not visible to this method as they are to getStaticProperties(). Seems inconsistent.

Is there any way to set a private/protected static property using reflection classes, or any other way for that matter?

TRIED

class Foo {
    static public $test1 = 1;
    static protected $test2 = 2;

    public function test () {
        echo self::$test1 . '<br>';
        echo self::$test2 . '<br><br>';
    }

    public function change () {
        self::$test1 = 3;
        self::$test2 = 4;
    }
}

$test = new foo();
$test->test();

// Backup
$test2 = new ReflectionObject($test);
$backup = $test2->getStaticProperties();

$test->change();

// Restore
foreach ($backup as $key => $value) {
    $property = $test2->getProperty($key);
    $property->setAccessible(true);
    $test2->setStaticPropertyValue($key, $value);
}

$test->test();

Answer

Shameer picture Shameer · Jun 23, 2011

For accessing private/protected properties of a class we may need to set the accessibility of that class first, using reflection. Try the following code:

$obj         = new ClassName();
$refObject   = new ReflectionObject( $obj );
$refProperty = $refObject->getProperty( 'property' );
$refProperty->setAccessible( true );
$refProperty->setValue(null, 'new value');