PHP: get classname from static call in extended class.

Question

Hello anyone. Here is the situation. I have two classes: Action, and MyAction, last one is declared as:

class MyAction extends Action {/* some methods here */}

All i need is method in Action class(only in it, cuz there will be a lot of inherited classes, and i don't want to implement that method in all of them), which will return classname from static call. Here is what 'm talking about:

Class Action {
 function n(){/* some actions */}
}

And when i call it:

MyAction::n(); // it should return "MyAction"

But each declaration in parent class have access only to parent class(__CLASS__ variable has value "Action").

Is there any possible ways to do that?

Answer 1

__CLASS__ always returns the name of the class in which it was used, so it's not much help with a static method. If the method wasn't static you could simply use get_class($this). e.g.

class Action {
    public function n(){
        echo get_class($this);
    }

}

class MyAction extends Action {

}

$foo=new MyAction;

$foo->n(); //displays 'MyAction'

Late static bindings, available in PHP 5.3+

Now that PHP 5.3 is released, you can use late static bindings, which let you resolve the target class for a static method call at runtime rather than when it is defined.

While the feature does not introduce a new magic constant to tell you the classname you were called through, it does provide a new function, get_called_class() which can tell you the name of the class a static method was called in. Here's an example:

Class Action {
    public static function n() {
        return get_called_class();
    }
}


class MyAction extends Action {

}


echo MyAction::n(); //displays MyAction

Answer 2

There is no way, in the available PHP versions, to do what you want. Paul Dixon's solution is the only one. I mean, the code example, as the late static bindings feature he's talking about is available as of PHP 5.3, which is in beta.

Answer 3

Now (when 5.3 has arrived) it's pretty simple:

http://ua.php.net/manual/en/function.get-called-class.php

Answer 4

It's not the ideal solution, but it works on PHP < 5.3.0.

The code was copied from septuro.com

if(!function_exists('get_called_class')) {
 class class_tools {
  static $i = 0;
  static $fl = null;

  static function get_called_class() {
      $bt = debug_backtrace();

   if (self::$fl == $bt[2]['file'].$bt[2]['line']) {
       self::$i++;
   } else {
       self::$i = 0;
       self::$fl = $bt[2]['file'].$bt[2]['line'];
   }

   $lines = file($bt[2]['file']);

   preg_match_all('/([a-zA-Z0-9\_]+)::'.$bt[2]['function'].'/',
       $lines[$bt[2]['line']-1],
       $matches);

         return $matches[1][self::$i];
     }
 }

 function get_called_class() {
     return class_tools::get_called_class();
 }
}