How do you copy a PHP object into a different object type

oop, php

Solution

You could have your classes instantiated empty and then loaded by any number of methods. One of these methods could accept an instance of the parent class as an argument, and then copy its data from there

class childClass extends parentClass
{
    function childClass()
    {
        //do nothing
    }

    function loadFromParentObj( $parentObj )
    {
        $this->a = $parentObj->a;
        $this->b = $parentObj->b;
        $this->c = $parentObj->c;
    }
};

$myParent = new parentClass();
$myChild = new childClass();
$myChild->loadFromParentObj( $myParent );

Problem

New class is a subclass of the original object It needs to be php4 compatible

Original source