Using call_user_function to access parent method in PHP

Question

Is there any way, in PHP, to call methods from a parent class using the arbitrary-argument call_user_func_array? Essentially, I want to write a little bit of boilerplate code that, while slightly less optimal, will let me invoke the parent to a method arbitrarily like this:

function childFunction($arg1, $arg2, $arg3 = null) {
    // I do other things to override the parent here...

    $args = func_get_args();
    call_user_func_array(array(parent, __FUNCTION__), $args); // how can I do this?
}

Is this an odd hack? Yeah. I will be using this boilerplate in many places, though, where there's likely to be error in transcribing the method args properly, so the tradeoff is for fewer bugs overall.

Answer 1

Try either one of

call_user_func_array(array($this, 'parent::' . __FUNCTION__), $args);

or

call_user_func_array(array('parent', __FUNCTION__), $args);

... depending on your PHP version. Older ones tend to crash slightly, careful :)