Reading a Non-Existent Property in OOP in PHP

In the example given in the previous lesson, we applied the magic method __get to catch access to private properties. In fact, this method can also be useful for catching access to non-existent properties.

Let's look at a practical example. Suppose we have a class User with a first name and last name, which are public properties:

User.php<?php
  class User
  {
    public $surn;
    public $name;
  }
?>

Let's make it so that the object of the class behaves as if it also has a property full, outputting the user's first and last name. Let's use our magic method __get for this:

User.php<?php
  class User
  {
    public $surname;
    public $name;
    public $patronymic;
    
    public function __get($property)
    {
      if ($property == 'full') {
        return $this->surn . ' ' . $this->name;
      }
    }
  }
?>

Let's test:

index.php<?php
  $user = new User;
  
  $user->surn = 'john';
  $user->name = 'smit';
  
  echo $user->full; // will output 'john smit'
?>