Question

I have the following code sample, which produces an error with the included constant when it is run. Could someone please show me where this is going wrong?

class Template {
  private $headers = "<link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" 
  href=\"" . ROOT . "system/stylesheets/universal.css\" />";

  ... More variables and methods
}

Here is the error I receive. I am sure that the ROOT constant is defined, just outside of this class:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '.', expecting ',' or ';' in <page.php> on line <line number>

Thank you for your time,
spryno724

Answer 1

You cannot specify non-static values as your members default values. And you’re trying to perform dynamic (runtime) things – concatenation of the strings.

class Template
{
    public static headers()
    {
        return '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' . ROOT . 'system/stylesheets/universal.css" />';
    }
}

Usage:

$headers = Template::headers()

Also – I missed that you’re using just instance variables, not constants. In this case you can also use initialization in constructor:

class Template
{
    private $headers;

    public static __construct()
    {
        $this->headers = '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' . ROOT . 'system/stylesheets/universal.css" />';
    }
}