Question

Can I declare a method in an object as both a static and non-static method with the same name that calls the static method?

I want to create a class that has a static method “send” and a non-static method that calls the static function. For example:

class test {
    private $text;
    public static function instance() {
        return new test();
    }

    public function setText($text) {
        $this->text = $text;
        return $this;
    }

    public function send() {
        self::send($this->text);
    }

    public static function send($text) {
        // send something
    }
}

I want to be able to call the function on these two was

test::send("Hello World!");

and

test::instance()->setText("Hello World")->send();

is it possible?

Answer 1

You can do this, but it’s a bit tricky. You have to do it with overloading: the __call and __callStatic magic methods.

class test {
    private $text;
    public static function instance() {
        return new test();
    }

    public function setText($text) {
        $this->text = $text;
        return $this;
    }

    public function sendObject() {
        self::send($this->text);
    }

    public static function sendText($text) {
        // send something
    }

    public function __call($name, $arguments) {
        if ($name === 'send') {
            call_user_func(array($this, 'sendObject'));
        }
    }

    public static function __callStatic($name, $arguments) {
        if ($name === 'send') {
            call_user_func(array('test', 'sendText'), $arguments[0]);
        }
    }
}

This isn’t an ideal solution, as it makes your code harder to follow, but it will work, provided you have PHP >= 5.3.