PHP variables as objects

I'm not sure this is a question that's directly answerable but I thought I'd give it a try.

In some other languages variables are created as objects, allowing you to manipulate the value of the variable.

For example, in Objective-C (i believe) you can create a string like this (or similar);

my_name = [NSString]

Select all Open in new window

Does anyone know if anyone has built a similar set of objects for PHP?

For example, I'd envisage it working as such;

$my_name = new pString()->set('John Doe');
$my_dob = new pDateTime()->set('07-08-1980');

echo $my_dob->get('Y-m-d'); // Notice how the get method can handle the formatting for you.

Select all Open in new window

My main reason for asking is I use objects a lot in projects, and think being able to do something like the following would be useful (most of my objects are linked to database tables);

class car {

public $id;
public $make;
public $model;
public $registered_date;

public function __construct() {
$this->id = new pInt()->setLength(11)->autoIncrement(true)->primaryKey(true);
$this->make = new pString()->setLength(20);
$this->model = new pString()->setLength(15);
}

}

Select all Open in new window

A simple object such as pString can then manipulate the string to 1) make sure it's a string, 2) strip it's length to match the length set when the pString object was created and so on. Because we know the variable is a pString object, it would be possible to have the object generate the SQL code required to create the car object in a mysql database, as it would know the type, length of the variable.

I've been thinking of creating something like this for my own projects, however I can't believe that this hasn't already been done and there's a collection of objects that can be added to your project to do just this already?

Does anyone know if such a library of objects exists?