Explanation of Magento 1.9.3 __call Change

Question

The changelog for Magento 1.9.3 mentions the following backwards-incompatible change:

Mage_Uploader_Model_Config_Abstract: Overrides the magic method __call and its behavior can be inconsistent.

Can somebody explain what this means? The example cited in the changelog is not clear either. Is it saying the behavior was changed to be inconsistent or it was changed to no longer be inconsistent?

Answer 1

Most of the Magento classes extend Varien_Object which implements the magic getter/setter/unsetter/has with the following __call method:

public function __call($method, $args)
{
    switch (substr($method, 0, 3)) {
        case 'get' :
            //Varien_Profiler::start('GETTER: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            $key = $this->_underscore(substr($method,3));
            $data = $this->getData($key, isset($args[0]) ? $args[0] : null);
            //Varien_Profiler::stop('GETTER: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            return $data;

        case 'set' :
            //Varien_Profiler::start('SETTER: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            $key = $this->_underscore(substr($method,3));
            $result = $this->setData($key, isset($args[0]) ? $args[0] : null);
            //Varien_Profiler::stop('SETTER: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            return $result;

        case 'uns' :
            //Varien_Profiler::start('UNS: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            $key = $this->_underscore(substr($method,3));
            $result = $this->unsetData($key);
            //Varien_Profiler::stop('UNS: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            return $result;

        case 'has' :
            //Varien_Profiler::start('HAS: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            $key = $this->_underscore(substr($method,3));
            //Varien_Profiler::stop('HAS: '.get_class($this).'::'.$method);
            return isset($this->_data[$key]);
    }
    throw new Varien_Exception("Invalid method ".get_class($this)."::".$method."(".print_r($args,1).")");
}

Thus, we you call getSomething, setSomething, hasSomething or unsSomething, this method uses the data to return something (via getData, setData and unsetData.

In 1.9.3, Mage_Uploader_Model_Config_Abstract overrides this method :

public function __call($method, $args)
{
    $key = lcfirst($this->_camelize(substr($method,3)));
    switch (substr($method, 0, 3)) {
        case 'get' :
            $data = $this->getData($key, isset($args[0]) ? $args[0] : null);
            return $data;

        case 'set' :
            $result = $this->setData($key, isset($args[0]) ? $args[0] : null);
            return $result;

        case 'uns' :
            $result = $this->unsetData($key);
            return $result;

        case 'has' :
            return isset($this->_data[$key]);
    }
    throw new Varien_Exception("Invalid method ".get_class($this)."::".$method."(".print_r($args,1).")");
}

The difference is that the key is not generated the same way.

Thus if you call getMyDescription() you will get the following:

• With Varien_Object : it will try to get the data with key = my_description
• With Mage_Uploader_Model_Config_Abstract : it will try to get the data with key = myDescription

To summarize, the result of the __call method is not consistent with every other Magento classes, the only other exception I'm aware of is Mage_Paypal_Model_Payflow_Request