I agree with VinnyD that what you need to do is add "&" in front of your __get function, as to make it to return the needed result as a reference:
public function &__get ( $propertyname )
But be aware of two things:
1) You should also do
return &$something;
or you might still be returning a value and not a reference...
2) Remember that in any case that __get returns a reference this also means that the corresponding __set will NEVER be called; this is because php resolves this by using the reference returned by __get, which is called instead!
So:
$var = $object->NonExistentArrayProperty;
means __get is called and, since __get has &__get and return &$something, $var is now, as intended, a reference to the overloaded property...
$object->NonExistentArrayProperty = array();
works as expected and __set is called as expected...
But:
$object->NonExistentArrayProperty[] = $value;
or
$object->NonExistentArrayProperty["index"] = $value;
works as expected in the sense that the element will be correctly added or modified in the overloaded array property, BUT __set WILL NOT BE CALLED: __get will be called instead!
These two calls would NOT work if not using &__get and return &$something, but while they do work in this way, they NEVER call __set, but always call __get.
This is why I decided to return a reference
return &$something;
when $something is an array(), or when the overloaded property has no special setter method, and instead return a value
return $something;
when $something is NOT an array or has a special setter function.
In any case, this was quite tricky to understand properly for me! :)