Question

I am trying to access the variables from the parent class as shown below:

 //PARENT CLASS
class InfoString{
    private $username = "JOE";

    public function _construct(){}

    protected function get_username(){
        return $this->username;
    }         
}


class Service extends InfoString{
    //this class should now inherit the variables in InfoString, right??
    public function _construct(){}

    public function hello_username(){
        echo "HELLO! ". parent::get_username(); 
    }
}

and I call the class like so:

$a = new Service();
$a->hello_username(); //prints nothing, instead of the username

Instead of getting “HELLO! JOE”, I get an empty string. What am I doing wrong here?

Also, suppose the class ‘InfoString’ will contain configuration parameters – is it a good idea to extend this class, or what would be the proper implementation to get the config variables from, say class ‘InfoString’ into another class???

Thanks.

Answer 1

You’re just extending InfoString, so you can just use $this->get_username(); and it will work fine. :: is for calling static methods.

Also, you’d get an error if you’d increase your error level. Call error_reporting(E_ALL); this will give you clues to solve similar issues in the future.