Getting Properties Through Magic in OOP in PHP

The next magic method we will look at is called __get. This method is triggered when trying to read the value of a private or protected property.

If you implement the __get method in any class, then all accesses to non-existent or hidden properties will be handled by this method.

In this case, PHP will automatically pass the name of the requested property as the first parameter of this method, and the value returned by this method will be perceived as the value of the property that was accessed.

It's probably not very clear how this works yet, so let's look at a practical example. Suppose we have the following class Test with a private and a public property:

<?php
	class Test
	{
		public  $prop1 = 1; // public property
		private $prop2 = 2; // private property
	}
?>

Let's add the magic method __get to our class, which for now will simply return the name of the property that was accessed:

<?php
	class Test
	{
		public  $prop1 = 1;
		private $prop2 = 2;
		
		public function __get($property)
		{
			return $property; // just return the property name
		}
	}
?>

Let's test the operation of the created magic method. Let's access three types of properties: a public property, a private one, and a non-existent one:

<?php
	$test = new Test;
	
	// Access the public property:
	echo $test->prop1; // will output 1 - that is, the property value
	
	// Access the private property:
	echo $test->prop2; // will output 'prop2' - the property name
	
	// Access a non-existent property:
	echo $test->prop3; // will output 'prop3' - the property name
?>

As you can see, our magic method reacts to access to private and non-existent properties, but ignores access to public ones - they work as they did before.