First, realize that you can easily make an object out of an array:

$oObject = (object) array(’FirstName’ => ‘Volo’, ‘LastName’ => ‘Mike’);

and so you can read and write this:

echo $oObject->LastName;
$oObject->FirstName = ‘Hello’;

Next, you can make your functions accept an object like so:

function MyFunction(& $oObject) {
}

And you can also use ‘return $oObject’ to make a function return an Object with multiple parameters if you want.

So there you have it — named parameters in an couple easy steps. No parsing necessary.

And like, *argh*. The main reason I use python for as many projects as possible is because it has named parameters.

Compare:

Ship ship=new ship(200,100,50,50,100,150,120,true);

with the hypothetical:
Coordinates position=new Coordinates(x=200, y=100,z=50);
Color color=new Color(red=50, green=100, blue=150);
Ship ship=new ship(position, color, facing_angle=120, alive=true );

Which would you prefer?

http://tinyurl.com/89v7c

There’s a way to do what you asked, to mix default and named parameters, with a weirdness like $named->default_var($default_var), but anyway Works with PHP5 only… I hope your Wordpress is accepting code on comments, because here it goes:

class named
{
    public function clean()
    {
        foreach ($this as $key => $value) {
            unset($this->$key);
        }
    }

    private function __call($method, $arguments)
    {
        if (isset($this->$method)) {
            return $this->$method;
        } else {
            return $arguments[0];
        }
    }
}

$named = new named();

function inputText($name, $maxlength = 5)
{
    global $named;

    $html = “maxlength($maxlength) . “\” “;

    $html .= ” />\n”;

    $named->clean();

    return $html;
}

echo inputText(’input_name’);

echo inputText(’input_name’, $named->maxlength = 10);

/*
Outputs:

*/

Actually that’s a pretty sweet solution considering the circustances You can define functions with mandatory parameters, default, and optional (using isset($name->$argument) from my previous code).

__call(), from PHP5, does the magic here, otherwise every method needs to be declared on named, like function maxlength()…

Since there was no “official” way, and alternatives like using associative array and eval(), I decide to write my own :p

Tell me what you think…

http://tinyurl.com/apts7