Question

i was wondering why there is no $parent->function(); syntax in php, but instead we can use parent::function(); which looks like it’s used inside a static class. Am i missing some php oop basics?

Answer 1

I admit it seems strange — and you didn’t miss anything in the manual ^^

But :

• Generally, when the child class re-defines a method that’s already defined in the parent class, you want the child’s method to totally override the parent’s one
  • except for __construct, I admit — that’s probably why it’s said explicitly in the manual that you have to call the parent’s __construct method yourself.
• Generally speaking, when working with non-static methods, you’ll just use $this to call methods in the same instance of either the child or the parent class ; no need to know where the method actually is.
• Using parent:: works fine, even if it looks like a static call

And here’s an example of code showing parent:: works fine :

class Father {
    public function method() {
        var_dump($this->a);
    }
}

class Son extends Father {
    protected $a;
    public function method() {
        $this->a = 10;
        parent::method();
    }
}

$obj = new Son();
$obj->method();

You’ll get this output :

$ /usr/local/php-5.3/bin/php temp.php
int(10)

Which shows that the method in the parent class has access to $this and the properties defined in the child class.