Question

Given the string name of a class in PHP, how can I access one of its static variables?

What I’d like to do is this:

$className = 'SomeClass'; // assume string was actually handed in as a parameter
$foo = $className::$someStaticVar;

…but PHP gives me a lovely “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM”, which apparently is a Hebrew name for the double colon(::).

Update: Unfortunately, I have to use PHP 5.2.X for this.

Update 2: As MrXexxed guessed, the static variable is inherited from a parent class.

Answer 1

Reflection will do it

A coworker just showed me how to do this with reflection, which works with PHP 5 (we’re on 5.2), so I thought I’d explain.

$className = 'SomeClass';

$SomeStaticProperty = new ReflectionProperty($className, 'propertyName'); 
echo $SomeStaticProperty->getValue();

See http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.reflectionproperty.php

A similar trick works for methods.

$Fetch_by_id = new ReflectionMethod($someDbmodel,'fetch_by_id');
$DBObject = $Fetch_by_id->invoke(NULL,$id);
// Now you can work with the returned object
echo $DBObject->Property1;
$DBObject->Property2 = 'foo';
$DBObject->save();

See http://php.net/manual/en/class.reflectionmethod.php and http://www.php.net/manual/en/reflectionmethod.invoke.php