Function Reference
PHP Manual

Object Aggregation/Composition Functions

Warning

This extension is EXPERIMENTAL. The behaviour of this extension -- including the names of its functions and anything else documented about this extension -- may change without notice in a future release of PHP. Use this extension at your own risk.

Introduction

In Object Oriented Programming, it is common to see the composition of simple classes (and/or instances) into a more complex one. This is a flexible strategy for building complicated objects and object hierarchies and can function as a dynamic alternative to multiple inheritance. There are two ways to perform class (and/or object) composition depending on the relationship between the composed elements: Association and Aggregation.

An Association is a composition of independently constructed and externally visible parts. When we associate classes or objects, each one keeps a reference to the ones it is associated with. When we associate classes statically, one class will contain a reference to an instance of the other class. For example:

Example#1 Class association

<?php
class DateTime {
   
   function 
DateTime() 
   {
       
// empty constructor
   
}

   function 
now() 
   {
       return 
date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
   }
}

class 
Report {
   var 
$_dt;
   
// more properties ...

   
function Report() 
   {
       
$this->_dt = new DateTime();
       
// initialization code ...
   
}

   function 
generateReport() 
   {
       
$dateTime $this->_dt->now();
       
// more code ...
   
}

   
// more methods ...
}

$rep = new Report();
?>
We can also associate instances at runtime by passing a reference in a constructor (or any other method), which allow us to dynamically change the association relationship between objects. We will modify the example above to illustrate this point:

Example#2 Object association

<?php
class DateTime {
   
// same as previous example
}

class 
DateTimePlus {
   var 
$_format;
   
   function 
DateTimePlus($format="Y-m-d H:i:s"
   {
       
$this->_format $format;
   }

   function 
now() 
   {
       return 
date($this->_format);
   }
}

class 
Report {
   var 
$_dt;    // we'll keep the reference to DateTime here
   // more properties ...

   
function Report() 
   {
       
// do some initialization
   
}

   function 
setDateTime(&$dt
   {
       
$this->_dt =& $dt;
   }

   function 
generateReport() 
   {
       
$dateTime $this->_dt->now();
       
// more code ...
   
}

   
// more methods ...
}

$rep = new Report();
$dt = new DateTime();
$dtp = new DateTimePlus("l, F j, Y (h:i:s a, T)");

// generate report with simple date for web display
$rep->setDateTime(&$dt);
echo 
$rep->generateReport();

// later on in the code ...

// generate report with fancy date
$rep->setDateTime(&$dtp);
$output $rep->generateReport();
// save $output in database
// ... etc ... 
?>

Aggregation, on the other hand, implies encapsulation (hidding) of the parts of the composition. We can aggregate classes by using a (static) inner class (PHP does not yet support inner classes), in this case the aggregated class definition is not accessible, except through the class that contains it. The aggregation of instances (object aggregation) involves the dynamic creation of subobjects inside an object, in the process, expanding the properties and methods of that object.

Object aggregation is a natural way of representing a whole-part relationship, (for example, molecules are aggregates of atoms), or can be used to obtain an effect equivalent to multiple inheritance, without having to permanently bind a subclass to two or more parent classes and their interfaces. In fact object aggregation can be more flexible, in which we can select what methods or properties to "inherit" in the aggregated object.

Examples

We define 3 classes, each implementing a different storage method:

Example#3 storage_classes.inc

<?php
class FileStorage {
    var 
$data;

    function 
FileStorage($data
    {
        
$this->data $data;
    }
    
    function 
write($name
    {
        
$fp fopen(name"w");
        
fwrite($fp$this->data);
        
fclose($data);
    }
}

class 
WDDXStorage {
    var 
$data;
    var 
$version "1.0";
    var 
$_id// "private" variable

    
function WDDXStorage($data
    {
        
$this->data $data;
        
$this->_id $this->_genID();
    }

    function 
store() 
    {
        if (
$this->_id) {
            
$pid wddx_packet_start($this->_id);
            
wddx_add_vars($pid"this->data");
            
$packet wddx_packet_end($pid);
        } else {
            
$packet wddx_serialize_value($this->data);
        }
        
$dbh dba_open("varstore""w""gdbm");
        
dba_insert(md5(uniqid(""true)), $packet$dbh);
        
dba_close($dbh);
    }

    
// a private method
    
function _genID() 
    {
        return 
md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
    }
}

class 
DBStorage {
    var 
$data;
    var 
$dbtype "mysql";

    function 
DBStorage($data
    {
        
$this->data $data;
    }

    function 
save() 
    {
        
$dbh mysql_connect();
        
mysql_select_db("storage"$dbh);
        
$serdata serialize($this->data);
        
mysql_query("insert into vars ('$serdata',now())"$dbh);
        
mysql_close($dbh);
    }
}

?>

We then instantiate a couple of objects from the defined classes, and perform some aggregations and deaggregations, printing some object information along the way:

Example#4 test_aggregation.php

<?php
include "storageclasses.inc";

// some utilty functions

function p_arr($arr
{
    foreach (
$arr as $k => $v)
        
$out[] = "\t$k => $v";
    return 
implode("\n"$out);
}

function 
object_info($obj
{
    
$out[] = "Class: " get_class($obj);
    foreach (
get_object_vars($obj) as $var=>$val) {
        if (
is_array($val)) {
            
$out[] = "property: $var (array)\n" p_arr($val);
        } else {
            
$out[] = "property: $var = $val";
        }
    }
    foreach (
get_class_methods($obj) as $method) {
        
$out[] = "method: $method";
    }
    return 
implode("\n"$out);
}


$data = array(M_PI"kludge != cruft");

// we create some basic objects
$fs = new FileStorage($data);
$ws = new WDDXStorage($data);

// print information on the objects
echo "\$fs object\n";
echo 
object_info($fs) . "\n";
echo 
"\n\$ws object\n";
echo 
object_info($ws) . "\n";

// do some aggregation

echo "\nLet's aggregate \$fs to the WDDXStorage class\n";
aggregate($fs"WDDXStorage");
echo 
"\$fs object\n";
echo 
object_info($fs) . "\n";

echo 
"\nNow let us aggregate it to the DBStorage class\n";
aggregate($fs"DBStorage");
echo 
"\$fs object\n";
echo 
object_info($fs) . "\n";

echo 
"\nAnd finally deaggregate WDDXStorage\n";
deaggregate($fs"WDDXStorage");
echo 
"\$fs object\n";
echo 
object_info($fs) . "\n";

?>

We will now consider the output to understand some of the side-effects and limitation of object aggregation in PHP. First, the newly created $fs and $ws objects give the expected output (according to their respective class declaration). Note that for the purposes of object aggregation, private elements of a class/object begin with an underscore character ("_"), even though there is not real distinction between public and private class/object elements in PHP.

$fs object Class: filestorage property: data (array) 0 => 3.1415926535898 1 => kludge != cruft method: filestorage method: write $ws object Class: wddxstorage property: data (array) 0 => 3.1415926535898 1 => kludge != cruft property: version = 1.0 property: _id = ID::9bb2b640764d4370eb04808af8b076a5 method: wddxstorage method: store method: _genid

We then aggregate $fs with the WDDXStorage class, and print out the object information. We can see now that even though nominally the $fs object is still of FileStorage, it now has the property $version, and the method store(), both defined in WDDXStorage. One important thing to note is that it has not aggregated the private elements defined in the class, which are present in the $ws object. Also absent is the constructor from WDDXStorage, which will not be logical to aggegate.

Let's aggregate $fs to the WDDXStorage class $fs object Class: filestorage property: data (array) 0 => 3.1415926535898 1 => kludge != cruft property: version = 1.0 method: filestorage method: write method: store

The process of aggregation is cumulative, so when we aggregate $fs with the class DBStorage, generating an object that can use the storage methods of all the defined classes.

Now let us aggregate it to the DBStorage class $fs object Class: filestorage property: data (array) 0 => 3.1415926535898 1 => kludge != cruft property: version = 1.0 property: dbtype = mysql method: filestorage method: write method: store method: save

Finally, the same way we aggregated properties and methods dynamically, we can also deaggregate them from the object. So, if we deaggregate the class WDDXStorage from $fs, we will obtain:

And deaggregate the WDDXStorage methods and properties $fs object Class: filestorage property: data (array) 0 => 3.1415926535898 1 => kludge != cruft property: dbtype = mysql method: filestorage method: write method: save

One point that we have not mentioned above, is that the process of aggregation will not override existing properties or methods in the objects. For example, the class FileStorage defines a $data property, and the class WDDXStorage also defines a similar property which will not override the one in the object acquired during instantiation from the class FileStorage.

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