Question

Hey php gurus. I’m running into some bizarre class scope problems that clearly have to do with some quirk in php. Can anyone tell me what out-of-the-ordinary situations might give the following error…

Fatal error: Cannot access self:: when no class scope is active in MyClass.php on line 5

Now, obviously if I were to use self:: outside of the class, I’d get errors… but I’m not. Here is a simplified version of the situation…

//file1
class MyClass{
   public static function search($args=array()){
       $results = MyDbObject::getQueryResults("some query");
       $ordered_results = self::stack($results); //Error occurs here

       return $ordered_results;
   }
   public static function stack($args){
       //Sort the results
       return $ordered_results;
   }
}

//file 2
include_once("MyClass.php");
$args = array('search_term'=>"Jimmy Hoffa");
$results = MyClass::search($args);

given this setup how can I get the error above? Here is what I’ve found so far…

MyClass::search($args) //does not give the error (usually)
call_user_func("MyClass::search"); // this gives the error!

Any other situations?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you are looking for Late Static Binding. This feature requires PHP version 5.3 at least.