Question

I’m getting this error whenever I attempt to declare a class:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or
T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /home3/foundloc/public_html/booka/page2.php
on line 7 (line 7 is the class declaration by the way).

Here’s the incredibly simple class I am attempting to declare:

Class abc
{

$a = “Hello!”;

} 

Is there some setting on PHP that i need to turn on? I feel like this is one of those ‘did you check if the TV is plugged in’ type of issues….

Answer 1

You can’t declare properties in classes like that. Members of a class can be either data members (constants and properties) or methods. In the PHP 5 way of doing things, this is basically how it works:

// de facto best practice: class names start with uppercase letter
class Abc
{
    // de facto best practice: ALL UPPERCASE letters for constants
    const SOME_COSTANT = 'this value is immutable'; // accessible outside and inside this class like Abc::SOME_CONSTANT or inside this class like self::SOME_CONSTANT

    public $a = 'Hello'; // a data member that is accessible to all
    protected $b = 'Hi'; // a data membet that is accessible to this class, and classes that extend this class
    private $c = 'Howdy'; // a data member that is accessible only to this class

    // visibility keywords apply here also
    public function aMethod( $with, $some, $parameters ) // a method
    {
        /* do something */
    }
}

You should really not consider using the php 4 practice of declaring data members with the var keyword, unless you are still developing for php 4 of course.