How do I get a PHP class constructor to call its parent's parent's constructor?

Question

The ugly workaround would be to pass a boolean param to Papa indicating that you do not wish to parse the code contained in it's constructor. i.e:

// main class that everything inherits
class Grandpa 
{
    public function __construct()
    {

    }

}

class Papa extends Grandpa
{
    public function __construct($bypass = false)
    {
        // only perform actions inside if not bypassing
        if (!$bypass) {

        }
        // call Grandpa's constructor
        parent::__construct();
    }
}

class Kiddo extends Papa
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        $bypassPapa = true;
        parent::__construct($bypassPapa);
    }
}

You must use Grandpa::__construct(), there's no other shortcut for it. Also, this ruins the encapsulation of the Papa class - when reading or working on Papa, it should be safe to assume that the __construct() method will be called during construction, but the Kiddo class does not do this.

class Grandpa 
{
    public function __construct()
    {}
}

class Papa extends Grandpa
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        //call Grandpa's constructor
        parent::__construct();
    }
}

class Kiddo extends Papa
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        //this is not a bug, it works that way in php
        Grandpa::__construct();
    }
}

Beautiful solution using Reflection.

<?php
class Grandpa 
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        echo "Grandpa's constructor called\n";
    }

}

class Papa extends Grandpa
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        echo "Papa's constructor called\n";

        // call Grandpa's constructor
        parent::__construct();
    }
}

class Kiddo extends Papa
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        echo "Kiddo's constructor called\n";

        $reflectionMethod = new ReflectionMethod(get_parent_class(get_parent_class($this)), '__construct');
        $reflectionMethod->invoke($this);
    }
}

$kiddo = new Kiddo();
$papa = new Papa();

I ended up coming up with an alternative solution that solved the problem.

• I created an intermediate class that extended Grandpa.
• Then both Papa and Kiddo extended that class.
• Kiddo required some intermediate functionality of Papa but didn't like it's constructor so the class has that additional functionality and both extend it.

I've upvoted the other two answers that provided valid yet ugly solutions for an uglier question:)