PHP RFC: Collections

• Version: 0.1.0
• Date: 2023-04-24
• Author: Derick Rethans derick@php.net
• Status: Draft
• First Published at: http://wiki.php.net/rfc/collections

This RFC suggests to introduce a new

Design Goals:

• keep it simple
• default behaviour should be the most expected
• prefer a method per function, instead of allowing the behaviour of a method to be changed through (optional) arguments.
• operations are on graphemes
• no redundant methods that can be constructed from other methods, unless they already exist in PHP, or are frequently used
• more as we discuss this...

Non Design Goals:

• introduce every feature of the intl extension

collection Articles(int => Article) { }

Is short hand for, but acts like ArrayAccess too:

class Articles {

private array $__collection_items;

public function __construct()
{
	$this->__collection_items = [];
}

public function offsetExists(int $offset): bool
{
	return array_key_exists($offset, $this->__collection_items);
}

public function offsetGet(int $offset) : ?Article
{
	return $this->offsetExists($offset) ? $this->__collection_items[$offset] : NULL;
}

public function offsetSet(int $offset, Article $item) : void
{
	$this->__collection_items[$offset] = $item;
}

public function offsetUnset(int $offset): void
{
	unset($this->__collection_items[$offset]);
}

}

Next PHP 8.x

There will be no impact to SAPIs, existing extensions, nor Opcache.

Either “yes” or “no” on including the proposed class.

There is no patch yet.

After the project is implemented, this section should contain

1. the version(s) it was merged into
2. a link to the git commit(s)
3. a link to the PHP manual entry for the feature
4. a link to the language specification section (if any)

Nothing rejected yet.

0.1.0 — 2023-04-24

• Initial Draft