Tag: OOP

A mistake that I keep making – I have a class that extends another class, and I need to know the class name of that subclass. However the function where I need the name is in the parent class. In this case the magic constant __CLASS__ won’t work, as it will return the name of the class where it is found. get_class() won’t work, too. Not without an important difference:

abstract class Foo
{
   public function getClassName()
   {
      return __CLASS__;
     // or return get_class();
   }

   public function getSubClassName()
   {
      return get_class($this); // the reference $this is important here
   }
}

class Bar extends Foo {};

$bar = new Bar();

echo '1. ' . $bar->getClassName();
echo '<br>';
echo '2. ' . $bar->getSubClassName();

This will result in

1. Foo
2. Bar

The first function call returns the (in my case) incorrect name of the parent class, while the 2nd function works as I need it.