How to print all properties of an object

Question

I have an unknown object in php page.

How can I print/echo it, so I can see what properties/values do it have?

What about functions? Is there any way to know what functions an object have?

Answer 1

<?php var_dump(obj) ?>

or

<?php print_r(obj) ?>

These are the same things you use for arrays too.

These will show protected and private properties of objects with PHP 5. Static class members will not be shown according to the manual.

If you want to know the member methods you can use get_class_methods():

$class_methods = get_class_methods('myclass');
// or
$class_methods = get_class_methods(new myclass());
foreach ($class_methods as $method_name) 
{
    echo "$method_name<br/>";
}

Related stuff:

get_object_vars()

get_class_vars()

get_class() <-- for the name of the instance

Answer 2

As no one has provided a Reflection API approach yet, here is how it would be done:

class Person {
    public $name = 'Alex Super Tramp';

    public $age = 100;

    private $property = 'property';
}


$r = new ReflectionClass(new Person);
print_r($r->getProperties());

//Outputs
Array
(
    [0] => ReflectionProperty Object
        (
            [name] => name
            [class] => Person
        )

    [1] => ReflectionProperty Object
        (
            [name] => age
            [class] => Person
        )

    [2] => ReflectionProperty Object
        (
            [name] => property
            [class] => Person
        )

)

The advantage when using Reflection is that you can filter by visibility of property, like this:

print_r($r->getProperties(ReflectionProperty::IS_PRIVATE));

Since Person::$property is private, it's returned when filtering by IS_PRIVATE:

//Outputs
Array
(
    [0] => ReflectionProperty Object
        (
            [name] => property
            [class] => Person
        )

)

Read the docs!

• ReflectionClass
• ReflectionClass::getProperties
• ReflectionClass::getDefaultProperties

Answer 3

var_dump($obj); 

If you want more info you can use a ReflectionClass:

http://www.phpro.org/manual/language.oop5.reflection.html

Answer 4

To get more information use this custom TO($someObject) function:

I wrote this simple function which not only displays the methods of a given object, but also shows its properties, encapsulation and some other useful information like release notes if given.

function TO($object){ //Test Object
                if(!is_object($object)){
                    throw new Exception("This is not a Object"); 
                    return;
                }
                if(class_exists(get_class($object), true)) echo "<pre>CLASS NAME = ".get_class($object);
                $reflection = new ReflectionClass(get_class($object));
                echo "<br />";
                echo $reflection->getDocComment();

                echo "<br />";

                $metody = $reflection->getMethods();
                foreach($metody as $key => $value){
                    echo "<br />". $value;
                }

                echo "<br />";

                $vars = $reflection->getProperties();
                foreach($vars as $key => $value){
                    echo "<br />". $value;
                }
                echo "</pre>";
            }

To show you how it works I will create now some random example class. Lets create class called Person and lets place some release notes just above the class declaration:

        /**
         * DocNotes -  This is description of this class if given else it will display false
         */
        class Person{
            private $name;
            private $dob;
            private $height;
            private $weight;
            private static $num;

            function __construct($dbo, $height, $weight, $name) {
                $this->dob = $dbo;
                $this->height = (integer)$height;
                $this->weight = (integer)$weight;
                $this->name = $name;
                self::$num++;

            }
            public function eat($var="", $sar=""){
                echo $var;
            }
            public function potrzeba($var =""){
                return $var;
            }
        }

Now lets create a instance of a Person and wrap it with our function.

    $Wictor = new Person("27.04.1987", 170, 70, "Wictor");
    TO($Wictor);

This will output information about the class name, parameters and methods including encapsulation information and the number of parameters, names of parameters for each method, method location and lines of code where it exists. See the output below:

CLASS NAME = Person
/**
             * DocNotes -  This is description of this class if given else it will display false
             */

Method [  public method __construct ] {
  @@ C:\xampp\htdocs\www\kurs_php_zaawansowany\index.php 75 - 82

  - Parameters [4] {
    Parameter #0 [  $dbo ]
    Parameter #1 [  $height ]
    Parameter #2 [  $weight ]
    Parameter #3 [  $name ]
  }
}

Method [  public method eat ] {
  @@ C:\xampp\htdocs\www\kurs_php_zaawansowany\index.php 83 - 85

  - Parameters [2] {
    Parameter #0 [  $var = '' ]
    Parameter #1 [  $sar = '' ]
  }
}

Method [  public method potrzeba ] {
  @@ C:\xampp\htdocs\www\kurs_php_zaawansowany\index.php 86 - 88

  - Parameters [1] {
    Parameter #0 [  $var = '' ]
  }
}


Property [  private $name ]

Property [  private $dob ]

Property [  private $height ]

Property [  private $weight ]

Property [ private static $num ]

Answer 5

try using Pretty Dump it works great for me

Answer 6

for knowing the object properties var_dump(object) is the best way. It will show all public, private and protected properties associated with it without knowing the class name.

But in case of methods, you need to know the class name else i think it's difficult to get all associated methods of the object.

Answer 7

<?php
    echo "<textarea name='mydata'>\n";
    echo htmlspecialchars($data)."\n";
    echo "</textarea>";
?>