Sometimes it’s necessary to obtain the value of a protected or private property. Fortunately PHP 5.3 includes a new reflection method named setAccessible which allows us to do so.

The Method:

/**
 * Get the value of a property using reflection.
 *
 * @param object|string $class
 *     The object or classname to reflect. An object must be provided
 *     if accessing a non-static property.
 * @param string $propertyName The property to reflect.
 * @return mixed The value of the reflected property.
 */
public static function getReflectedPropertyValue($class, $propertyName)
{
    $reflectedClass = new ReflectionClass($class);
    $property = $reflectedClass->getProperty($propertyName);
    $property->setAccessible(true);

    return $property->getValue($class);
}

Example Usages:

getReflectedPropertyValue($foo, 'myProtectedProperty');
getReflectedPropertyValue('Foo', 'myProtectedStaticProperty');
getReflectedPropertyValue('Foo\Bar', 'myProtectedStaticProperty');