Question

what I did is, I used a static field in my Database class, to store mysqli object. here is the code :

public static $Driver;

public static function Connect()
{
  self::$Driver = new mysqli(self::$Server, self::$DBUsername, self::$DBPassword, self::$DBName);
}

later, in another class, I want to use this static field. I tried this :

if (Database::Driver->errno != 0) return(false); else return(true);

and got this error for that line :

syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR …

can you tell me what I’m doing wrong?

Answer 1

To access a static property, you need a $ after the ::. The class property $Driver is accessed as though it is a variable in scope of class Database.

 if (Database::$Driver->errno != 0)
 //-----------^^^

Without the $, it would be parsed as a class constant, and constants, which are primitives, cannot have object properties of their own. Hence the unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR, which means an unexpected ->.