Question

I have a class App with static and non static variables.

class App{
    protected static $appName = 'dummy';
    protected $appIcon = 'icon';

    public static function getAppName() {
        return self::$appName;
    }
}

Then I extend this class like this

class Notepad extends App{
    private static $appName = 'notepad';
    private $appIcon = 'notepad_icon';
}

I want to get appName without creating an instance of Notepad. I tried Notepad::getAppName() but this returns always dummy.

Any ideas or suggestions???

Thanks in advance!

J!

After Sergey’s post:

I was wandering which is the most OOP way to do something like this, and the most efficient (speed/memory)?

a. declaring variables as puplic

b. creating an instance of an object just to get a few variables

c. rewrite the static function to all the children classes as Sergey suggested

Answer 1

Actually you have a new keyword “static” in php > 5.3.

I changed your example:

class App{
    protected static $appName = 'dummy';
    protected $appIcon = 'icon';

    public static function getAppName() {
        return static::$appName;
    }
}

class Notepad extends App{
    protected static $appName = 'notepad';
    protected $appIcon = 'notepad_icon';
}

This way Notepad::getAppName() will return ‘notepad’;
More info here.