samhuri.net/posts/2006/07/late-static-binding.md
Sami Samhuri 007b1058b6
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---
Title: "Late static binding"
Author: Sami Samhuri
Date: "19th July, 2006"
Timestamp: 2006-07-19T10:23:00-07:00
Tags: php, coding, coding, php
---
*Update: This has <a href="http://www.php.net/~derick/meeting-notes.html#late-static-binding-using-this-without-or-perhaps-with-a-different-name">been discussed</a> and will be uh, sort of fixed, in PHP6. You'll be able to use static::my_method() to get the real reference to self in class methods. Not optimal, but still a solution I guess.*
As colder on ##php (freenode) told me today, class methods in PHP don't have what they call late static binding. What's that? It means that this code:
```php
class Foo
{
public static function my_method()
{
echo "I'm a " . get_class() . "!\n";
}
}
class Bar extends Foo
{}
Bar::my_method();
```
outputs "I'm a Foo!", instead of "I'm a Bar!". That's not fun.
Using <code>__CLASS__</code> in place of <code>get_class()</code> makes zero difference. You end up with proxy methods in each subclass of Foo that pass in the real name of the calling class, which sucks.
```php
class Bar extends Foo
{
public static function my_method()
{
return parent::my_method( get_class() );
}
}
```
I was told that they had a discussion about this on the internal PHP list, so at least they're thinking about this stuff. Too bad PHP5 doesn't have it. I guess I should just be glad I won't be maintaining this code.
The resident PHP coder said "just make your code simpler", which is what I was trying to do by removing duplication. Too bad that plan sort of backfired. I guess odd things like this are where PHP starts to show that OO was tacked on as an after-thought.