Having child class call parent class

Question

I sometimes find myself performing a similar task on various different related things. For instance, I might have "books", "movies", and "songs", and I might have the task "addNote" which gets the note text from the client, adds it to a database, associates it with the appropriate parent record, and returns some data to the client. I've implemented it as shown below, and while it works, it just seems wrong. Is there a better way to do this, and if so how? Thanks

class parentClass
{
    protected function someTask($table)
    {
        //do the task which is common to child1/2/3Class using $table
    }
}

class child1Class extends parentClass
{
    public function someTask($dummy=NULL){parent::someTask('class1_table');}
}
class child2Class extends parentClass
{
    public function someTask($dummy=NULL){parent::someTask('class2_table');}
}
class child3Class extends parentClass
{
    public function someTask($dummy=NULL){parent::someTask('class3_table');}
}

$ajax=new child1Class(); //specific childClass based on MVC
$ajax->someTask();

Answer 1

The way you have it is correct. The only other option you have is making the parent method "public"

class parentClass
{
    public function someTask($table)
    {
        echo "hello " . $table;
    }
}

class child1Class extends parentClass
{
  // no needed method here
}
 class child2Class extends parentClass
{
  // no needed method here
}

$obj1 = new child1Class();
$obj1->someTask('class1_table');
$obj2 = new child1Class();
$obj2->someTask('class2_table');
$obj3 = new child2Class();
$obj3->someTask('class3_table');

result with obj1: "hello class1_table"
result with obj2: "hello class2_table"
result with obj3: "hello class3_table"

• Public makes the method directly accessible through the object.
• Protected makes the method accessible through the child class
• Private makes the method only accessible through its own class.