PHP 8.1 - Strange Behavior with Object Cloning and Reference Issues in Arrays
I just started working with I'm integrating two systems and I'm having trouble with I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm experiencing unexpected behavior when cloning objects that are stored in an array. I have a class `Item` that contains some properties and I've implemented a `__clone` method to handle deep cloning of these objects. However, when I try to clone an instance of `Item` from an array, the properties don't seem to be duplicating as expected. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```php class Item { public $name; public $data; public function __construct($name, $data) { $this->name = $name; $this->data = $data; } public function __clone() { // Deep clone any nested object or array if needed if (is_array($this->data)) { $this->data = array_map(function($item) { return clone $item; }, $this->data); } } } $original = new Item('Item1', [new Item('SubItem1', []), new Item('SubItem2', [])]); $items = [$original]; $clonedItem = clone $items[0]; $clonedItem->name = 'ClonedItem'; // Modify a subitem $clonedItem->data[0]->name = 'ModifiedSubItem'; var_dump($items[0]); // Expect original to remain unchanged var_dump($clonedItem); // Expect cloned item to show modified subitem ``` When I run this code, I noticed that modifying the subitem in the cloned object also affects the original object, which shouldn't happen if the cloning was done correctly. The output shows that both the original and cloned objects reference the same subitem, which leads to confusion. I've tried adding debug statements in the `__clone` method to see if it's being called, and it is. I've also checked that the items in `data` are indeed being cloned as expected. What could I be missing that leads to shared references instead of independent objects? Is there a better way to handle cloning nested objects in PHP 8.1? Any insights would be appreciated. I'm working on a application that needs to handle this. Thanks in advance! I'm working on a service that needs to handle this. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Has anyone else encountered this? Any examples would be super helpful. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm working with Php in a Docker container on CentOS. I appreciate any insights!