Enforcing Object Types in PHP: Using the PHP5 instanceof Operator - Forcing object types in PHP 5: using the “instanceof” operator (
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As you’ll see, the “instanceof” operator is very simple to use. It takes two arguments for doing its business. The first one on the left is the object you want to check, while the second one, placed on the right, is the name of the class (or eventually an interface name) used for determining if the object in question is “an instance of” the pertinent class. Of course, I deliberately used the above terms, thus you can see how intuitive this operator is. Its basic syntax is as follows:
if (object instanceof class name){
// do something useful
}
Now that you know how this operator is used in PHP 5, let’s redefine the corresponding web page generator class, in order to verify the type of objects passed to its “addHTMLElement()” method. Here’s the new signature for this class, which as I mentioned before, uses the “instanceof” operator:
class PageGenerator{
private $output='';
private $title;
public function __construct($title='Default Page'){
$this->title=$title;
}
public function doHeader(){
$this->output='<html><head><title>'.$this-
>title.'</title></head><body>';
}
public function addHTMLElement($htmlElement){
if(!$htmlElement instanceof HTMLElement){
throw new Exception('Invalid (X)HTML element');
}
$this->output.=$htmlElement->getHTML();
}
public function doFooter(){
$this->output.='</body></html>';
}
public function fetchHTML(){
return $this->output;
}
}
Please notice in the above class how the “instanceof” operator is included inside the “addHTMLElement()” method, in order to make sure that all the objects passed in are instances of the “HTMLElement” class, defined earlier. Now, it’s possible to rebuild the web page you saw previously, in this case making sure that all the input objects pushed into the web page generator class are true (X)HTML widget objects. Here’s the corresponding example:
try{
// spawn some HTML elements
$h1=new Header1(array('name'=>'header1','class'=>'headerclass'),'Content for H1 element goes here');
$div=new Div(array('name'=>'div1','class'=>'divclass'),'Content for Div element goes here');
$par=new Paragraph(array('name'=>'par1','class'=>'parclass'),'Content for Paragraph element goes here');
$teststr=’This is not a HTML element’;
// instantiate page generator class
$pageGen=new PageGenerator();
$pageGen->doHeader();
// add 'HTMLElement' objects
$pageGen->addHTMLElement($teststr) //pass simple string to this method
$pageGen->addHTMLElement($h1);
$pageGen->addHTMLElement($div);
$pageGen->addHTMLElement($par);
$pageGen->doFooter();
// display web page
echo $pageGen->fetchHTML();
}
catch(Exception $e){
echo $e->getMessage();
exit();
}
As you can see in the above example, I passed a simple test string (not a “HTMLElement” object) in to the web page generator class, which will result in an exception thrown by the “addHTMLElement()” method, being caught for the appropriate “catch” block, as follows:
Invalid (X)HTML element
At this point, I used the “instanceof” operator, in order to determine the validity of input objects, which transform the above web page generator class into a much more efficient piece of code. I hope you realize the vital importance of filtering the input of your class methods by this operator, thus they can be shielded from incorrect data coming from outside.
Having illustrated the proper implementation of the “instanceof” operator within the web page generator class, there’s still one more thing to be done. Similar to the (X)HTML widget classes I wrote for PHP 4 in my previous article, I’d like to include this operator as part of their “getHTML()” method, in this way allowing the creation of web pages that render nested (X)HTML elements. Thus, let’s jump together into the next section, to see how this is done.
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