What does this mean? "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM"

Question

T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM sounds really exotic, but most certainly absolutely nonsense to me. I traced it all down to this lines of code:

<?php Class Context {     protected $config;      public function getConfig($key) { // Here's the problem somewhere...     $cnf = $this->config;     return $cnf::getConfig($key);     }      function __construct() {     $this->config = new Config();     } } ?> 

In the constructor I create a Config object. Here's the class:

final class Config {     private static $instance = NULL;     private static $config;      public static function getConfig($key) {     return self::$config[$key];     }      public static function getInstance() {     if (!self::$instance) {         self::$instance = new Config();     }     return self::$instance;     }      private function __construct() {     // include configuration file     include __ROOT_INCLUDE_PATH . '/sys/config/config.php'; // defines a $config array     $this->config = $config;     } } 

No idea why this doesnt work / what the error means...

Answer 1

T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM is the double colon scope resolution thingy PHP uses - ::

Quick glance at your code, I think this line:

return $cnf::getConfig($key); 

should be

return $cnf->getConfig($key); 

The first is the way to call a method statically - this code would be valid if $cnf contained a string that was also a valid class. The -> syntax is for calling a method on an instance of a class/object.

Answer 2

Just my two cents for future visitors who have this problem.

This is the correct syntax for PHP 5.3, for example if you call static method from the class name:

MyClassName::getConfig($key); 

If you previously assign the ClassName to the $cnf variable, you can call the static method from it (we are talking about PHP 5.3):

$cnf = MyClassName; $cnf::getConfig($key); 

However, this sintax doesn't work on PHP 5.2 or lower, and you need to use the following:

$cnf = MyClassName; call_user_func(array($cnf, "getConfig", $key, ...otherposibleadditionalparameters... )); 

Hope this helps people having this error in 5.2 version (don't know if this was openfrog's version).