How to acess Private function of another class in PHP

Question

I have a dbHandeller.php file . as follow

class dbHandeler {

    var $conn;

 public function __construct(){

        $this->initiatedb();

 }

    private function initiatedb(){

        //Details of the Databse
            $servername = "localhost";
            $username = "root";
            $password = "";
            $dbname = "xxxxxx";

            // Create connection
            $this->conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

            // Check connection
            if (!$this->conn) {
                die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
            }else
               return $this->conn;

    }

 private function sql_query($query){

 }

}

Then I have donation.php and it extends the DB class

function __autoload($class_name) {
    include $class_name . '.php';
}

class donation extends dbHandeler{


    public function __construct(){

        $dbObj = new dbHandeler();
        $dbObj->initiatedb();
    }

    public function putDonation(){
        var_dump($_POST);

    }

    public function getDonation(){


    }
}

When I try to access the donation class I am getting following error

<br />
<b>Fatal error</b>: Call to private method dbHandeler::initiatedb() from context 'donation' in <b>C:\xampp\htdocs\templeform\api\donation.php</b> on line <b>13</b><br />

error

@RayonDabre yes , So if I am extending the class then I should be able to access the private class right ? — Vikram Anand Bhushan, Oct 26 '15 at 10:43
No: private is for the class itself. protected allows access for extended classes, and (of course) public allows for any. — hexasoft, Oct 26 '15 at 10:44
change the method to `protected`, so extending classes will be able to access it — Oliver Maksimovic, Oct 26 '15 at 10:44
you can not access a private function outside its parent class, you must learn difference between Public, Private and Protected Functions. — Amrinder Singh, Oct 26 '15 at 10:49

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '15 at 10:50

6

The "private" access specifier is meant to be available within the class it is defined only, you cannot call it from outside the class it is defined in, even from a child class. You can maybe use the "protected" access specifier instead which will be available to the child classes as well but not the other classes. Hope this helps.

answered Oct 26 '15 at 10:50

Vishnu Nair

2,395
14
16

1

better if you add this info as comment, it can not be treated as an Answer – Amrinder Singh Oct 26 '15 at 10:51
3

@Insomania He can't post comments with 1 reputation – Yang Oct 26 '15 at 10:53
Thanks for talking some sense in to him @dave – Vishnu Nair Oct 26 '15 at 10:54

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '15 at 10:52

If the method is private, there is a reason, why the method is private. A private functions could only be called inside the class. If the method should be available in inherited classes, you should mark the function protected. If the function should be accessible from everywhere, it must be public.

If you want to change the accessibility of the function, you could do so with ReflectionMethod::setAccessible - but doing this is most often a good indicator for a bad design.

$method = new ReflectionMethod('dbHandeler', 'sql_query');
$method->setAccessible(true);

If you dont want to change the accessibility, you could also use reflection to invoke the method directly, which might be the better option.

Nevertheless you should really think about you design. If this is your own class, why don't you just mark the function public or protected?

How to acess Private function of another class in PHP

2 Answers2