[PHP-DEV] can't reflection on DateTime properties?

[Rasmus Schultz]

I wrote a library that can serialize/unserialize PHP object graphs to JSON
data.

Somebody reported it doesn't work on the DateTime class.

Does this deliberately not work?

    $date = new DateTime();

    var_dump($date);

outputs:

    object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
      ["date"]=>
      string(19) "2016-06-04 19:30:19"
      ["timezone_type"]=>
      int(3)
      ["timezone"]=>
      string(3) "UTC"
    }

however, this...

    $reflection = new ReflectionClass('DateTime');

    var_dump($reflection->getProperties());

outputs:

    array(0) {
    }

The object clearly has properties corresponding to it's internal state, but
reflection doesn't seem to report them?

Also, what comes out of var_dump() appears to be something intended for
human consumption? I'm guessing that's not the actual internal state of the
object - most likely the internal state consists of the "timezone_type" and
an integer timestamp?