Bootstraping all functions in PHP

Question

This is a bit of a crazy idea, but would there be a way to bootstrap all the functions that php have without using a helper function to call the functions.

What I mean is actually calling some code or function before and after every basic function call.

Example:

<?php
echo "Hello";
?>

But these functions would be called before echo and after echo:

<?php
function pre_echo()
{
  do_something();
}

function post_echo()
{
  do_something_else();
}
?>

Answer 1

"Bootstrapping" is not the correct term here - what you want to do is called Aspect-oriented Programming, and yes, it can be done in PHP. However, it seems to require substantial changes to the way you normally use PHP.

Answer 2

Just as an FYI, your example picked something which isn't actually a function in the strictest sense, echo is a language construct and handled differently by the PHP internals.

I think there's only two ways to achieve what you are after though:

• Preprocess your PHP code to augment it with overridden function calls
• or, modify the PHP internals to support hooking all function calls