Question

sorry for the vague title… I have a problem with a php4 class that seems hard to put to words.

My class has a “possibleValues” array, that holds information on what kind of values are acceptable for certain attributes that can be changed from the outside. In my pseudocode example below you can see that I have attributes that share the same acceptable values (colors). Obviously, the $this->colors in my code fails, because you can’t define one class variable via another (can you?).

How would I go about setting a common colors array that I could reference like this so I don’t have to repeat the same valid options for different fields that allow the same values?

Class MyTest {

    var $colors = array('red', 'yellow', 'blue');

    var $possibleValues = array(
        'someAttribute',               array(0,1),
        'someEmotions',                array('happy, 'sad'),
-->     'someColorableAttribute',      $this->colors,
-->     'someOtherColorableAttribute', $this->colors,
     );

    ...

}

Answer 1

In answer to your question, you should set the variable in the constructor. In PHP4, which you really shouldn’t be using, the constructor should have the name of the class.

function MyTest()
{
   $this->var = $this->colors;
}