In the end I wrote the following class which performs the task using unserializing a fabricated string. It uses reflection to determine what the access-type of properties is and what the name of the constructor is (if any).
The heart of the class is the following line:
$object = unserialize('O:'.strlen($class_name).':"'.$class_name.'"'.substr(serialize($properties), 1));
which serializes the property-array and renames the serialized to the desired class_name.
class ObjectFactory {
private $properties;
private $constructors;
public function __construct() {
$this->properties = array();
$this->constructors = array();
}
private function setClass($class_name) {
$class = new ReflectionClass($class_name);
$this->properties[$class_name] = array();
foreach($class->getProperties() as $property) {
$name = $property->getName();
$modifier = $property->getModifiers();
if($modifier & ReflectionProperty::IS_STATIC) {
continue;
} else if($modifier & ReflectionProperty::IS_PUBLIC) {
$this->properties[$class_name][$name] = $name;
} else if($modifier & ReflectionProperty::IS_PROTECTED) {
$this->properties[$class_name][$name] = "\0*\0".$name; // prefix * with \0's unserializes to protected property
} else if($modifier & ReflectionProperty::IS_PRIVATE) {
$this->properties[$class_name][$name] = "\0".$class_name."\0".$name; // prefix class_name with \0's unserializes to private property
}
}
if($constructor = $class->getConstructor()) {
$this->constructors[$class_name] = $constructor->getName();
}
}
private function hasClassSet($class_name) {
return array_key_exists($class_name, $this->properties);
}
private function hasClassProperty($class_name, $property_name) {
if(!$this->hasClassSet($class_name))
$this->setClass($class_name);
return array_key_exists($property_name, $this->properties[$class_name]);
}
private function getClassProperty($class_name, $property_name) {
if(!$this->hasClassProperty($class_name, $property_name))
return false;
return $this->properties[$class_name][$property_name];
}
private function hasClassConstructor($class_name) {
if(!$this->hasClassSet($class_name))
$this->setClass($class_name);
return $this->constructors[$class_name] !== false;
}
private function getClassConstructor($class_name) {
if(!$this->hasClassConstructor($class_name))
return false;
return $this->constructors[$class_name];
}
public function fetch_object(array $assoc, $class_name = 'stdClass', array $params = array()) {
$properties = array();
foreach($assoc as $key => $value) {
if($property = $this->getClassProperty($class_name, $key)) {
$properties[$property] = $value;
}
}
$object = unserialize('O:'.strlen($class_name).':"'.$class_name.'"'.substr(serialize($properties), 1));
if($constructor = $this->getClassConstructor($class_name)) {
call_user_func_array(array($object, $constructor), $params);
}
return $object;
}
}