Question

First time extending a class in PHP and I’m getting a fatal error that says the method is private when it’s not. I’m sure it’s something elementary, but I’ve studied books and forums, and I just can’t pin down what I’ve done to generate this error. Any help greatly appreciated. Details below:

Error message:

Fatal error: Call to private method testgiver::dbConnect() from context ‘testprinter’ in /root/includes/classes/testprinter.php on line 726

Line 726 of testprinter in the code below:

private function buildquestionarray()
{
  $query = "etc etc";
  **$conn = $this->dbConnect('read');
  $result = $conn->query($query);
  ...

Testprinter extends testgiver. Here’s the extension of the class:

require_once('testgiver.php');

class testprinter extends testgiver
{...

And the declaration of the method in testgiver:

protected function dbConnect($userconnecttype)
{...

Thanks again!

Answer 1

As already Alexander Larikov said that you can’t access protected methods from class instance but not only protected methods but also you can’t access private methods from class instance. To access a protected method of a parent class from the instance of a subclass you declare a public method in the subclass and then call the protected method of the parent class from the public method of the subclass, i.e.

class testgiver{
    protected function dbConnect($userconnecttype)
    {
        echo "dbConnect called with the argument ".$userconnecttype ."!";
    }
}

class testprinter extends testgiver
{
    public function buildquestionarray() // public instead of private so you can call it from the class instance
    {
        $this->dbConnect('read');
   }
}

$tp=new testprinter();
$tp->buildquestionarray(); // output: dbConnect called with the argument read!

DEMO.