oop problems with PHP 4

[kante]

i cretated a class for a creation of a tree view starting from a database like [iditem, parentitem, description)

this works correctly under PHP 5 but not on PHP4
the problem stands in the recursive call and assignment to subchilds it seems that php4 loses the references to the children objects in some bad way...

anoyone got the same problem and knows how to get around it?

 
<?php
    class TreeNode
    {
        var $_description;
        var $_internalTable;

    function TreeNode($description)
    {
        $this->_description = $description;
        $this->_internalTable = array();
    }

    function description($valore = null)
    {
        if ($valore != null)
            $this->_description = $valore;
        else
            return $this->_description;
    }

    function addNode($node)
    {
        $this->_internalTable[] = $node;
    }

    function hasChilds()
    {
    echo count($this->_internalTable);
        return (count($this->_internalTable) != 0);
    }

    function printTree($lev = 0)
    {
        $rientro = "";
        for ($i = 0; $i < $lev; $i++)
            $rientro .= "     ";
print_r($this->_internalTable);
            if ($this->hasChilds() == true)
            {
                echo $rientro . "+" . $this->description() . "<br>\n";
                foreach ($this->_internalTable as $node)
                    echo $node->printTree($lev + 1);
            }
            else
                echo $rientro . "-" . $this->description() . "<br>\n";
        }
    }

function buildTree(&$tree, $dbArray, $parentId)
{
    foreach ($dbArray as $id => $element)
    {
        if ($element['parent'] == $parentId)
        {
            $newTree = new TreeNode($element['description']);
            $tree->addNode($newTree);
            buildTree($newTree, $dbArray, $id);
        }
    }
}

// ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ //

$conn = mysql_connect($ip, $uname, $pwd);
mysql_select_db($dbName, $conn);
$dbres = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $table", $conn);
//$table structure (id, parent, description) ->parent points to id of a parent node in the same table
mysql_close($conn);
$nodes = array();

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($dbres))
{
    $attrs = array();
    $attrs['parent']      = $row['parent'];
    $attrs['description'] = $row['description'];
    $nodes[$row['id']]    = $attrs;
}

echo "<pre>\n\n";
//apd_set_pprof_trace();
$treeView = new TreeNode("ROOT");
buildTree($treeView, $nodes, 0);
$treeView->printTree();
echo "\n\n</pre>";
?>

[ahundiak]

Read the chapter on classes. It talks about using & for references.

function TreeNode(&$description) 
        { 
            $this->_description =& $description; 
            $this->_internalTable = array(); 
        } 

[kante]

Originally posted by ahundiak
Read the chapter on classes. It talks about using & for references.

function TreeNode(&$description) 
        { 
            $this->_description =& $description; 
            $this->_internalTable = array(); 
        } 

[/B]

ok for the description... but as I see i doesn't work that with
$this->_internalTable = array();
and when i call
$treeView->printTree();
it doesn't print out the grand-children....
it seems php loses the references with array() or instead of creating a reference to array it creates a copy...