Question

I have two classes involving composition not inheritance., class A and class B. One of class A’s properties is an array of class B objects. Class A has a public method A::getName(). Class B also has a public method with the same name. The method for class A is as follows:

public function getName()
{
    return $this->_name;
}

My problem is when I’m in Class B and I try to access this public method for class A, I get the “cannot access protected property” error. $_name is a private property in each class. Class A’s would be the name, for example, of a form, and for B, the name of the field.

This is the code that generates the error (constructor for class B):

public function __construct($name)
{
    $this->foo = A::getName() .'-'. $name;
}

Why is it not allowing me to access class A’s public method getName()? Any way to fix or get around this?

---

FIX:

I realized I was invoking class A’s method statically, though I need to deal with each object individually, as each object has a unique name. To solve my issue I gave a public set function for class B for the unique name, and called that in class A:

class A
{
    ...

    $this->list[$B_name] = new B($B_name);

    $this->list[$B_name]->setID($this->_name, $B_name);

}

class B
{
    ...

    public function setID($name, $subName)
    {
        $this->foo = $name .'-'. $subName;
}

Answer 1

This is because of you are trying to call it statically and in that method you are accessing instance variable.

it could work like this:

class A {
   private static $_name = "A";
   public static function getName() {
        return self::$_name;
   }
}

class B {
   public function __construct($name) {
        $this->foo = A::getName() .'-'. $name;
   }
}

or this way (this is imho your situation)

class A {
   private $_name;

   public function __construct($name) {
        $this->_name = $name;
   }

   public function getName() {
       return $this->_name;
   }
}

class B {
   public function __construct($name, A $parent) {
        $this->foo = $parent->getName() .'-'. $name;
   }
}