How to get the path of a derived class from an inherited method?

Question

How to get the path of the current class, from an inherited method?

I have the following:

<?php // file: /parentDir/class.php    class Parent  {       protected function getDir() {          return dirname(__FILE__);       }    } ?> 

and

<?php // file: /childDir/class.php    class Child extends Parent {       public function __construct() {          echo $this->getDir();        }    }    $tmp = new Child(); // output: '/parentDir' ?> 

The __FILE__ constant always points to the source-file of the file it is in, regardless of inheritance.
I would like to get the name of the path for the derived class.

Is there any elegant way of doing this?

I could do something along the lines of $this->getDir(__FILE__); but that would mean that I have to repeat myself quite often. I'm looking for a method that puts all the logic in the parent class, if possible.

Update:
Accepted solution (by Palantir):

<?php // file: /parentDir/class.php    class Parent  {       protected function getDir() {          $reflector = new ReflectionClass(get_class($this));          return dirname($reflector->getFileName());       }    } ?> 

Answer 1

Using ReflectionClass::getFileName with this will get you the dirname the class Child is defined on.

$reflector = new ReflectionClass("Child"); $fn = $reflector->getFileName(); return dirname($fn); 

You can get the class name of an object with get_class() :)

Answer 2

Yes. Building on Palantir's answer:

   class Parent  {       protected function getDir() {          $rc = new ReflectionClass(get_class($this));          return dirname($rc->getFileName());       }    }