What are the potential pitfalls of using getters and setters in PHP classes?

One potential pitfall of using getters and setters in PHP classes is that they can lead to excessive boilerplate code, making the class harder to read and maintain. To solve this issue, you can use the magic methods __get() and __set() to dynamically get and set properties without explicitly defining getters and setters for each property. 

class User {
    private $data = [];

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

    public function __set($name, $value) {
        $this->data[$name] = $value;
    }
}

$user = new User();
$user->name = "John Doe";
echo $user->name; // Output: John Doe

Keywords

getters setters PHP classes encapsulation data validation

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