Why do PHP magical methods have to be public?

Question

I use magical methods in my PHP classes but when i try to put them private, I'm warned :

WARN: The magic method __get() must have public visibility and cannot be static in ...

I wouldn't like to have these methods in Eclipse auto completion. (maybe a way with phpdoc ?) So my question is, why must these methods be public ?

Yearn

Only overloading magic methods must be public. This requirement is not enforced on stuff like constructors and destructors. – Rakia

These methods will be called from outside the class context, so what's surprising about their need to be public? – Inquietude

@KerrekSB : call inaccessible attribute from outside class context mean call __get method from outside ? so it would be the answer ! – Yearn

What php version is this? I don't get any such warning. – Briony

@ExplosionPills enable error reporting – Flem

Answer 1

Because you are invoking the methods from a scope outside of the class.

For example:

// this can be any class with __get() and __set methods
$YourClass = new YourOverloadableClass();

// this is an overloaded property
$YourClass->overloaded = 'test';

The above code is "converted" to:

$YourClass->__set('overloaded', 'test');

Later when you get the property value like:

$var = $YourClass->overloaded;

This code is "converted" to:

$YourClass->__get('overloaded');

In each case the magic method, __get and __set, are being invoked from outside the class so those methods will need to be public.

Pleasantry

I don't think "public scope" is a word... at least it obscures what's really going on :-( – Inquietude

@Kerrek SB: I think a more appropriate term would be "calling scope". – Rakia

You're right, public scope isn't really descriptive of what's going on. Will modify the answer to be clearer on what is happening. – Pleasantry