[RESOLVED] Trying to get a handle on OOP PHP

[bjazmoore]

I am fairly green under the arms here in PHP land. My background is mostly languages from the "Evil Empire". Picked up some simple code (I hope it is simple) that I am trying to leverage for a project here at work.

I do not understand what is going on here exactly, although I am sure that it is a call or refrence of some kind. The call looks like this:

$connector = SystemComponent::DB();

The function looks like this:

	function &DB(){
		static $dbConnect;
		if (!isset($dbConnect)){
			require_once('DbConnector.php');
			$dbConnect = new DbConnector;
		}
		return $dbConnect;
	}

What is the story behind the "&" in front of the function name and the "::" operator in the call? I tried to find these in the PHP documentation (I am sure they are there), but did not know what to search for.

Thanks in advance.

Brad

[bradgrafelman]

The '&' sign before a function means that the fuction is returning a reference. For more information, see this manual page: [man]language.references.return[/man].

The '::' is a "Scope Resolution Operator". You can learn more about it here: [man]language.oop5.paamayim-nekudotayim[/man].

[bjazmoore]

Excellent - thanks so much. Just what I needed.