Question

I’m trying to automate the process of accessing libraries in the framework I use (CodeIgniter) but am running in to some issues.

Codeigniter currently loads libraries like this:

$this->CI->load->library('name');
$this->CI->name->method();

Needless to say that this is a whole bunch of code for something that could be achieved with far less.

I would like to access my lib like this:

_Lib::name->method();

The _Lib class will then take care of loading the right lib (or directing the loading of that lib to the loader class in this case).

However, above code results in error “unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR”.

My end goal is to be able to talk to libraries and have them load on-demand with as little code as possible, and without initializing a global variable.

Any ideas? Keeping in mind that it needs to look as usable and self-explanatory as possible.

I’d like to avoid using something like _Lib(‘name’)->method() as it’s quite tedious to write that every time.

Edit:

I ended up creating a default Library which I extend my Libraries from, the default Library has properties which direct the loading of other libraries (or models, or helpers, or .. etc) to the appropreate loader, so I can do

$this->lib->name->method();

Thanks everyone for your answers

Answer 1

The way you’ve written it, _Lib::name is a class constant. Did you mean _Lib::$name->method(); ?