It should be mentioned that this method can set even non-public properties. It may sound strange but it can actually be very useful when creating an object based on mysql result.
Consider a User class:
<?php
class User {
// Private properties
private $id, $name;
private function __construct () {}
public static function load_by_id ($id) {
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT id, name FROM users WHERE id=?');
$stmt->execute([$id]);
return $stmt->fetchObject(__CLASS__);
}
/* same method can be written with the "name" column/property */
}
$user = User::load_by_id(1);
var_dump($user);
?>
fetchObject() doesn't care about properties being public or not. It just passes the result to the object. Output is like:
object(User)#3 (2) {
["id":"User":private]=>
string(1) "1"
["name":"User":private]=>
string(10) "John Smith"
}