How can I get the classname from a static call in an extended PHP class?

php oop inheritance
Anton picture Anton · Feb 3, 2009 · Viewed 64.3k times · Source

I have two classes: Action and MyAction. The latter is declared as:

class MyAction extends Action {/* some methods here */}

All I need is method in the Action class (only in it, because there will be a lot of inherited classes, and I don’t want to implement this method in all of them), which will return classname from a static call. Here is what I’m talking about:

Class Action {
 function n(){/* something */}
}

And when I call it:

MyAction::n(); // it should return "MyAction"

But each declaration in the parent class has access only to the parent class __CLASS__ variable, which has the value “Action”.

Is there any possible way to do this?

Answer

Paul Dixon picture Paul Dixon · Feb 3, 2009

__CLASS__ always returns the name of the class in which it was used, so it's not much help with a static method. If the method wasn't static you could simply use get_class($this). e.g.

class Action {
    public function n(){
        echo get_class($this);
    }

}

class MyAction extends Action {

}

$foo=new MyAction;

$foo->n(); //displays 'MyAction'

Late static bindings, available in PHP 5.3+

Now that PHP 5.3 is released, you can use late static bindings, which let you resolve the target class for a static method call at runtime rather than when it is defined.

While the feature does not introduce a new magic constant to tell you the classname you were called through, it does provide a new function, get_called_class() which can tell you the name of the class a static method was called in. Here's an example:

Class Action {
    public static function n() {
        return get_called_class();
    }
}


class MyAction extends Action {

}


echo MyAction::n(); //displays MyAction

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