Call child method from parent class

Question

I have a Class that is used as an extender by several other Classes, and in one instance, a method from the parent Class needs to call back to a method from the child Class. Is there a way of doing this?

I realise PHP contains abstract Classes and functions, but would require each child Class to have the declared abstract function(s), which I do not require in this case.

For example (these are examples, not real life) -

Class parent{

    function on_save_changes(){

        some_parent_function();

        if($_POST['condition'] === 'A') :
            // Call 'child_1_action()'
        elseif($_POST['condition'] === 'B') :
            // Call 'child_2_action()'
        endif       

        some_other_parent_function();

    }

    function some_parent_function(){
        // Do something here, required by multiple child Classes
    }

}

Class child_1 Extends parent{

    function __construct(){
        $this->on_save_changes();
    }

    function child_1_action(){
        // Do something here, only every required by this child Class
    }

}

Class child_2 Extends parent{

    function __construct(){
        $this->on_save_changes();
    }

    function child_2_action(){
        // Do something here, only every required by this child Class
    }

}

Answer 1

You can do this by just simply calling the child method, e.g.:

if($_POST['condition'] === 'A') :
    $this->some_parent_function();
    $this->child_1_action();

However, you should avoid doing this. Putting checks in the parent that call methods only existing in a child class is a very bad design smell. There is always a way to do things in a more structured manner by utilizing well-known design patterns or simply thinking the class hierarchy through better.

A very simple solution you can consider is implementing all of these methods in the parent class as no-ops; each child class can override (and provide implementation for) the method that it's interested in. This is a somewhat mechanical solution so there's no way to know if it's indeed the best approach in your case, but even so it's much better than cold-calling methods that technically are not guaranteed to exist.