Cannot access class constant from an instance using the :: scope operator

Question

I hit a strange problem today and even as a PHP engineer i'm stumped at this:

It seems you can access a class constant from an object instance such as:

class a {
    const abc = 1;
}
$a = new a();
var_dump($a->abc);

This will output null instead of the expected 1. I was able to do the following:

class a {
    const abc = 1;
}
$a = new a();
var_dump(a::abc);

But in the context of a sub object that doesn't really know who the parent is exactly, i find it extremely annoying to do:

class a {
    const abc = 1;
}
$a = new a();
$c = get_class($a);
var_dump($c::abc);

Is it me or this is completly stupid, if not, please enlighten me why its working that way.

EDIT

Another way of doing it but it's not really better:

class a {
    const abc = 1;
}
class b {
    public function getA(){
        return new a();
    }
}
$b = new b();
$c = $b->getA();
var_dump($c::abc);

This last example works more like what i am doing and experiencing...

Answer 1

I found a relatively nice and clean way to make my problem easier to live with. Here is the solution i've applied. It is not necessarely the best but for my uses it does exactly what i need.

By creating a magic __get method, i intercept the request for the constant name from and instance point of view and i use a quick reflection to see if that constant exists and return it's value.

This allows me to actually use all in one line a pattern that looks like this:

class a {
    const abc = 1;
    public function __get($key){
        $r = new ReflectionObject($this);
        if($r->hasConstant($key)){ return $r->getConstant($key); }
    }
}
class b {
    public function getA(){
        return new a();
    }
}
$b = new b();
var_dump($b->getA()->abc);
var_dump($b->getA()->def);

Althought i'd have liked to do:

var_dump($b->getA()::abc);
var_dump($b->getA()::def);

I guess this could be possible later in 5.4+ considering we finaly have array dereferencing, we could probably ask them to add static dereferencing soon.