How can I get the classname from a static call in an extended PHP class?

Question

I have two classes: Action and MyAction. The latter is declared as:

class MyAction extends Action {/* some methods here */} 

All I need is method in the Action class (only in it, because there will be a lot of inherited classes, and I don’t want to implement this method in all of them), which will return classname from a static call. Here is what I’m talking about:

Class Action {  function n(){/* something */} } 

And when I call it:

MyAction::n(); // it should return "MyAction" 

But each declaration in the parent class has access only to the parent class __CLASS__ variable, which has the value “Action”.

Is there any possible way to do this?

Answer 1

__CLASS__ always returns the name of the class in which it was used, so it's not much help with a static method. If the method wasn't static you could simply use get_class($this). e.g.

class Action {     public function n(){         echo get_class($this);     }  }  class MyAction extends Action {  }  $foo=new MyAction;  $foo->n(); //displays 'MyAction' 

Late static bindings, available in PHP 5.3+

Now that PHP 5.3 is released, you can use late static bindings, which let you resolve the target class for a static method call at runtime rather than when it is defined.

While the feature does not introduce a new magic constant to tell you the classname you were called through, it does provide a new function, get_called_class() which can tell you the name of the class a static method was called in. Here's an example:

Class Action {     public static function n() {         return get_called_class();     } }   class MyAction extends Action {  }   echo MyAction::n(); //displays MyAction