class function: what class was it called on?

merkinmuffley

Assume you've got some class that has one or more classes inherited from it. The parent class has a function that is normally called using the :: operator. Can you tell if the function was called on the parent class, or one of the child classes?

Put another way:
Class A has a class function foo(), callable by A::foo(). Class B extends A. If you call B::foo(), can you tell from within foo() that the code said B and not A?

Here's an example, I'm wondering if I can substitute something for the get_class() call in the function classFunction(), so that the code prints out "func for childclass" at the end. Obviously it's not correct as written, because there's no $this when the function is called using the :: operator.

class ParentClass
{
	function ParentClass()
	{
		echo "Instantiating new ".get_class($this)."<br>";
	}

function classFunction()
{
	echo "func for ".get_class($this);
}

}

class ChildClass extends ParentClass
{
}

$p = new ParentClass();
$c = new ChildClass();

ChildClass::classFunction();

junkie_doodle

As far as i read on the web, know about my experience and see on phpdev newsgroup, PHP is not really OO

I even saw posts from phpdev team in phpdev news group saying something like "PHP will remain as a scripting language and simple... If there's anyone, who's looking for fully OO support, it's now possible to use Java classes in your PHP code.." while they were discussing about new Zend engine

I am using some of the OO features of PHP, especially when i am coding libraries. But i think, at least for now, it's not logical to expect powerful OO support from PHP.

This is my personal view, that PHP has only a OO flavour in it and it's only good to code OO in PHP to have a easier-to-understand source.

But ofcourse, i might be misunderstanding some of the features of PHP and i also might be misunderstood the posts at phpdev newsgroup. But this is a fact that i had problems, while trying to apply OO logic to my softwares because of not having - or not working some OO features that i was looking at PHP.

merkinmuffley

thanks for the reply. my question has nothing to do with whether php is truly object-oriented; i'm looking for technical help on this one, not an analysis of php's oo capabilities... anybody??