overloading - PHP __call vs method_exists

Question

The Project I'm working on contains something like a wrapper for call_user_func(_array) which does some checks before execution. One of those checks is method_exists (In Case the supplied first argument is an instance of a class and the second is a method name) The other is_callable. The function will throw an exception if one of those checks fails.

My Code contains an array with function names (setFoo, setBar, etc.) and the php magic function for overloading (__call) which handles setting, replacing and deletion of certain variables (better certain array elements).

The Problem: method_exists will return false if the function is not defined.

Do I have any chance to get a true if the __call function does proper handling of the request?

Answer 1

__call handles calls to methods that don't exist. method_exists is an introspection method that checks the existence of a method.

How can __call be determined to handle a method? I think you have to throw an exception manually in __call if doesn't handle your request and catch the exception in the code that would otherwise use method_exists. BadMethodCallException exists for this purpose.