And the bug here is...?

I didn't say it was a bug.

I only said that it is a limitation... maybe easy to change.

ReflectionClass -> newInstanceArgs is very nice but only works with public constructors. If a class constructor is private, for example, you cannot instantiate it with this method, even from this class scope.

The same example with call_user_func_array, you change the constructor with another method and it works... But this function doesn't allow to instantiate an object (you can only call a parent constructor on an already instantiated object).

So, in this context (a class with a private/protected constructor), the only way of instantiating it with an arbitrary number of arguments is to build a string and use eval... not very nice nor performant.

Thanks

Reclassified. NOTE: Discussion about this should be done on the internals mailing list..

I would also argue that such a feature would be absolutely great for Unit Testing. If method calls can be done on protected/private methods via ReflectionMethod::setAccessible(), why not allow that with private constructors?

All the best,
Jérôme

As of PHP 5.4 you can use ReflectionClass::newInstanceWithoutConstructor() and manually invoke the constructor.

$rc = new ReflectionClass("foo");
$obj = $rc->newInstanceWithoutConstructor();
$ctor = $rc->getConstructor();
if ($ctor) { // constructors are optional!
    $ctor->setAccessible(true);
    $ctor->invoke($obj);
}

A couple more function calls seems a small price to pay for the ability to do something the class itself specifically tried to prohibit you from doing.

Thanks a lot for this reply !

Even if from a pure OOP perspective, it looks strange to me... If it works, I'm can go with it !

To be a little bit more precise about why such a feature is important in a unit testing context:

When implementing pure Composition (strong aggregation), it is forbidden to instantiate a composite class if container is not instantiated. However, if you work in a bottom to top approach, you'll have to be able to instantiate this composite class for testing, before to program and test the container class.

Bests

marking this not a bug, in 5.6 we extended the list of classes allowed to be instantiated through newInstanceWithoutConstructor, if you have something else in mind to improve the current situation, please open a new issue as feature request.