What is reflection in PHP

Reflection in PHP is a powerful feature that allows you to inspect classes, interfaces, functions, methods, and extensions. It provides mechanisms to analyze and manipulate the behavior of PHP code at runtime. This capability is particularly useful for building frameworks, libraries, and tools that need to handle objects and code dynamically.

With reflection, developers can retrieve information about class properties, methods, and more without relying on hard-coded values. This can enhance introspection and enable dynamic programming techniques.

Example of Reflection in PHP

<?php class SampleClass { public $property = 'Hello, World!'; public function method() { return 'This is a method.'; } } $reflectedClass = new ReflectionClass('SampleClass'); // Get class properties foreach ($reflectedClass->getProperties() as $property) { echo 'Property: ' . $property->getName() . '<br>'; } // Get class methods foreach ($reflectedClass->getMethods() as $method) { echo 'Method: ' . $method->getName() . '<br>'; } ?>

PHP Reflection PHP Classes Inspecting PHP Code Dynamic Programming in PHP