Proposal

This RFC is for exposing the “get_debug_info” API already available to internal classes (written in C) to PHP classes via a magic method called __debugInfo().

Example Usage:

class File {
// "Resource(stream)" isn't all that useful
private $fp;

// But all the stream meta data is
public function __debugInfo() {
return $this->fp ? stream_get_meta_data($fp) : [];
}

public function open($filename, $mode = 'r'){
$this->fp = fopen($filename, $mode);
}
}

$f = new File;
var_dump($f); // object(File)#1 { }
$f->open('http://php.net');
var_dump($f);
/*
object(File)#1 {
["wrapper_type"]=>
string(4) "http"
["stream_type"]=>
string(10) "tcp_socket"
etc...
*/