I have a situation where I need to pass the name of the child class back to the parent class in order to take some action.
The way I have it set up at the moment is:
class SomeParentClass {
public function __construct($c = false){
...
}
}
class SomeChildClass extends SomeParentClass {
public function __construct(){
parent::__construct(__CLASS__){
...
}
}
}
This will pass the name of the child class back to the parent, but if the child class does not do this then the variable $c will retain the bool value false.
It works, it makes sense, but is this the cleanest way to do this? Is there a way to auto detect which child class has called parent::__construct() without passing it as a variable?
Many thanks
You can do this with get_called_class() ( http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-called-class.php ) in PHP 5.
See : Getting the name of a child class in the parent class (static context)
<?php
class SomeParentClass {
public function __construct($c = false){
echo get_called_class();
}
}
class SomeChildClass extends SomeParentClass {
public function __construct(){
parent::__construct(__CLASS__);
}
}
class OtherChildClass extends SomeParentClass {
public function __construct(){
parent::__construct(__CLASS__);
}
}
$a = new SomeChildClass();
$b = new OtherChildClass();
I could be wrong, but under normal circumstances, the parent shouldn't be aware of its child classes. I'm sure there's a better way to do what you're trying to do.
Exceptions to this "rule" is perhaps base classes that expose static (optionally final) constructors which are then called with a child class prefixed, e.g.
class Parent
{
public final static function create()
{
return new static;
}
}
class Child extends Parent
{
public function __construct()
{
// special code here
}
}
var_dump(Child::create());