Accessing constant and static members of a class name held in a variable

[Rafe Culpin]

Does anyone please know of a way to access static methods of a class, when
the name of that class is held in a variable?

I have several classes (PHP5) which all have identically named methods and
members.

I want to pass the name of one of the classes to an included file which
does some standard operations using those methods and members. (So several
different programs can include that file, each passing a different class
name.)

I am doing this by putting the name of one of the classes in a variable
which is passed to the included file. So for example:
$classname = 'Foo';

$instance = new $classname();
$instance->do_method($id) ;

That all works fine.

But how do I access static methods and constant members of the class?

$classname::sta tic_method()
and
$classname::MY_ CONSTANT
both give errors. Every variation I've tried gives an error. Is there
something I'm missing in the syntax which will let me do this? Or maybe a
different method of passing the name, or of approaching the while thing?

I've found two ways of kludgeing round the problem. One is to use eval()
round everything, and the other (untested) is to use Reflection. But
surely there's a less messy way?

--
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[ZeldorBlat]

Rafe Culpin wrote:

Does anyone please know of a way to access static methods of a class, when
the name of that class is held in a variable?

I have several classes (PHP5) which all have identically named methods and
members.

I want to pass the name of one of the classes to an included file which
does some standard operations using those methods and members. (So several
different programs can include that file, each passing a different class
name.)

I am doing this by putting the name of one of the classes in a variable
which is passed to the included file. So for example:
$classname = 'Foo';

$instance = new $classname();
$instance->do_method($id) ;

That all works fine.

But how do I access static methods and constant members of the class?

$classname::sta tic_method()
and
$classname::MY_ CONSTANT
both give errors. Every variation I've tried gives an error. Is there
something I'm missing in the syntax which will let me do this? Or maybe a
different method of passing the name, or of approaching the while thing?

I've found two ways of kludgeing round the problem. One is to use eval()
round everything, and the other (untested) is to use Reflection. But
surely there's a less messy way?

--
To reply email rafe, at the address cix co uk

You can get to them using call_user_func( ) and constant() like this:

class foo {
const BAR = 5;
public static function baz() {
//do something static
}
}

$myClassName = 'foo';
$bar = constant($myCla ssName . '::BAR');
$z = call_user_func( array($myClassN ame, 'baz'));

[Rafe Culpin]

In article <11************ **********@v46g 2000cwv.googleg roups.com>,
ze********@gmai l.com (ZeldorBlat) wrote:

You can get to them using call_user_func( ) and constant() like this:

class foo {
const BAR = 5;
public static function baz() {
//do something static
}
}

$myClassName = 'foo';
$bar = constant($myCla ssName . '::BAR');
$z = call_user_func( array($myClassN ame, 'baz'));

Aha! That works great - many thanks.

Seems odd they haven't made it simpler to do. Maybe in the next version.

--
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