Using __set_state()

The __set_state() magic method is triggered (not really) for classes exported by the var_export() function. The method accepts a single array type parameter and returns an object, as per the following synopsis:

static object __set_state(array $properties)

The var_export() function outputs or returns a parsable string representation of a given variable. It is somewhat similar to the var_dump() function, except that the returned representation is a valid PHP

<?php

class User
{
  public $name = 'John';
  public $age = 34;
  private $salary = 4200.00;
  protected $identifier = 'ABC';
}

$user = new User();
var_export($user); // outputs string "User::__set_state..."
var_export($user, true); // returns string "User::__set_state..."

This results in the following output:

User::__set_state(array(
 'name' => 'John',
 'age' => 34,
 'salary' => 4200.0,
 'identifier' => 'ABC',
))

string(113) "User::__set_state(array(
 'name' => 'John',
 'age' => 34,
 'salary' =...