On the Stubbles blog today Frank Kleine looks at a cool trick that the features of PHP 5.3 now make possible - extending objects at runtime by adding in new methods and functionality.

With the advent of PHP 5.3 adding new methods to an instance of a class at runtime becomes possible with PHP as well, using anonymous functions and a little bit of __call() magic.

He illustrates with a bit of code - defining the base class and using a __call method to catch any undefined method calls. Using this in conjunction with closures makes it possible to call the method internally, avoiding the usual error that could result from setting it like you would a class property.

Continuing their look at the "magic functions" that are included in PHP5, DevShed has posted this new tutorial looking at the "__call" method to intercept calls to methods in a class that don't exist.

If you're a PHP developer who wishes to learn how to implement and use the set of magic functions that come included with PHP 5, you've come to the right place. [...] As the title of this article suggests, in the new few lines I'm going to take a deeper look at the"__call()" function, so that you can quickly become familiar with it.

They include code examples of the __call method in use - catching a call to a "fetch" method.

This new tutorial from DevShed takes a look at the XDebug debugging tool for PHP and how the xdebug_call_function method allows for even more flexibility in your testing experience.

The Xdebug extension comes equipped with many other functions, however, that allow you to debug PHP applications more deeply. Therefore, in this second article of the series, I'll be discussing how to use another useful function included with the extension, called "xdebug_call_function()," which as its name suggests, can be utilized for keeping track of the functions called by a PHP script.

They start with a look back at two of the other xdebug functions - xdebug_call_file and xdebug_call_line - before showing how to use this new function (xdebug_call_function) to get the function that called your custom handler.

Martynas Jusevicius has a new post looking at method overloading in PHP5 - a workaround to make it possible at least.

Method overloading (a feature of object-oriented programing which allows having several class methods with the same name but different signatures) is not implemented in PHP, which is a drawback compared to Java. However, PHP 5 provides a way to imitate overloading by catching calls to "inaccessible methods" with magic method __call.

In his example he uses __call to route the request to the correct version of the constructor (__construct0 or __construct1) based on the number of arguments passed in

On the Ibuildings blog today Lorenzo Alberton takes a look at the Zend Framework, specifically as to how it can mimic regular HTTP calls with the built-in components.

One of the unit testing best practices suggests to break dependencies, so you can test each component separately. The first problem that arises when you want to test controllers might be having a tighter control over the HTTP Request and Response objects.

This problem is overcome with the Zend_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase. The second problem it with calls to external resources (like models/databases or web services). This is the prime focus of the post and seceral blocks of code are included to make a class to emulate the HTTP responses you might get back from the service.

In a recent post to his blog Dhiraj Patra looks at the caching functionality that PEAR has to offer via the PEAR Cache package.

Caching is currently a hot topic in the PHP world. Because PHP produces dynamic web pages, scripts must be run and results must be calculated each time a web page is requested, regardless if the results are the same each time. In addition, PHP compiles the script every time it is requested. [...] PEAR's Cache package offers a framework for the caching of dynamic content, database queries, and PHP function calls.

He talks a bit about what kind of methods are included with the package and shows examples of how it works for function call caching, caching the output from the script execution and how to implement your own custom caching extension of the main code to make it even more flexible.

Stefan Mischook has a (very) basic introduction video posted showing how to call functions/methods from another class outside the one you're currently using.

Recently I was asked by someone how they could call a function found in one class, in another. This may seem like basic stuff to those of us who know...but please keep in mind, at one time, none of us knew anything!

You can check out the video here. Be sure to check out more of the great videos he's created too on topics ranging from MVC frameworks to a beginner's guide to PHP.

Chris Hartjes has posted again about the "rebirth" of a Zend Framework component he's worked on - the Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler.

So, dear readers, I received some nice emails and comments from those you have used Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler, along with having a nice email conversation with Wil Sinclair from Zend.

He still wants to "rip things up and start over", but has decided on a slightly different route - mapping the older function calls to the new ones via a __call catch and including a message stating that the older function call would be deprecated.

In a new post to his blog today, John Coggeshall comments on some thoughts from Alan Knowles about a method for making PHP obsolete.

Alan, I think you were smoking way too much PHP when you wrote this post.. This in particular really surprised me to hear you say [that a module that made mysql stored procedure calls based on a URL and returned JSON could make PHP obsolete]. While I do understand the concept your explaining, I simply can't see how the model is practical at all for two big reasons.

His reasons involve not having a business case where an entire application is right there for the user to download and that its an insecure method for running an app.

Larry Garfield has put together some benchmarks based around a request he had from other developers (the "performance czars") as to how the magic functions in PHP5 would perform in the new environment.

Already, there is talk of how, and if, to leverage PHP 5's object handling now that we don't need to deal with the weirdness of PHP 4's object model. Of course, because it's Drupal, our army of performance czars want to know just what the cost is for object handling, and especially advanced object magic like __get(), __call(), the ArrayAccess interface, and so forth.

He an his tests on a Thinkpad (Intel Core2 Duo 2.2Ghz) running Kubuntu and PHP 5.2.3. They were run two million times benchmarking the different methods for:

• function calls
• __call
• __get
• __set
• iterators (array)
• inheritance
• composition

His results are listed at the end of the post.