How does overloading in PHP relate to the issue of checking if a class has been set or initialized?

When checking if a class has been set or initialized in PHP, overloading can be used to dynamically handle these checks by defining methods like __isset() and __get() in the class. By using overloading, we can customize how the class responds to checks for properties that may not have been explicitly set or initialized. 

class MyClass {
    private $data = [];

    public function __isset($name) {
        return isset($this->data[$name]);
    }

    public function __get($name) {
        return $this->data[$name] ?? null;
    }
}

$myObject = new MyClass();
$myObject->name = 'John';

if (isset($myObject->name)) {
    echo "Property 'name' is set.";
} else {
    echo "Property 'name' is not set.";
}

Keywords

overloading PHP class set initialized

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