accessing private variable from member function in PHP
- by Carson Myers
I have derived a class from Exception, basically like so:
class MyException extends Exception {
private $_type;
public function type() {
return $this->_type; //line 74
}
public function __toString() {
include "sometemplate.php";
return "";
}
}
Then, I derived from MyException like so:
class SpecialException extends MyException {
private $_type = "superspecial";
}
If I throw new SpecialException("bla") from a function, catch it, and go echo $e, then the __toString function should load a template, display that, and then not actually return anything to echo.
This is basically what's in the template file
<div class="<?php echo $this->type(); ?>class">
<p> <?php echo $this->message; ?> </p>
</div>
in my mind, this should definitely work. However, I get the following error when an exception is thrown and I try to display it:
Fatal error: Cannot access private property SpecialException::$_type in C:\path\to\exceptions.php on line 74
Can anyone explain why I am breaking the rules here? Am I doing something horribly witty with this code? Is there a much more idiomatic way to handle this situation? The point of the $_type variable is (as shown) that I want a different div class to be used depending on the type of exception caught.
