Hey, I'm going to make this brief, because I suspect a lot of people are going to jump at the opportunity to cry bloody murder when I suggest this.
I wonder if it would make sense to have a way to globally hook into __construct() - sort of like how you can hook into the autoloaders with spl_autoload_register() ... This could be useful for things like dependency injection and debugging. Lithium (for one) uses a unified constructor to accomplish something like this: http://lithify.me/docs/manual/lithium-basics/architecture.wiki That's bad for various reasons I won't delve into. Various DI containers use a replacement for the "new" keyword, e.g. DI::create('MyClass') which is bad (worse) for other reasons... So basically, what if you could solve these design patterns by hooking into constructors directly instead - something like: <?php > constructor_hook_register(function($object) { > echo 'an object of type '.get_class($object).' was constructed!'; > }); > $test = new Foo(); would print: an object of type Foo was constructed! One other area where this could help, is in event-driven systems, where this sort of thing could be used for "co-construction". Of course, you could accomplish the same thing in a more controlled fashion, by simply establishing conventions - for example, DI::inject(new My Class()) would work just as well, it's just inconvenient to type; on the other hand, it's explicit about what's happening. So I'm not at all demanding this feature - I'm merely posting this for debate. Thanks, Rasmus Schultz
