How to reference a static class variable inside a namespace?

Question

Inside my php class Patient, I have a static method which init's some static class variables, which works fine. I do so like this:

private static $request;

public static function init() {
    self::$request = new Something();
}

But when I add a namespace to the top of the file, it dies on this line for some reason, and it's confusing me. Is there a special way to call static variables when inside a namespace?

Answer 1

Since your code works when it's in the global namespace, but fails when it's in a custom namespace, you'll need to provide a fully-qualified class name whenever you use external classes. So in this situation, simply change your code to:

public static function init() {
    self::$request = new \Something();
}

And if for some reason this doesn't solve your issue, then you can at least rule out static variables as being related to the problem by (temporarily) changing self::$request = to $temp = and observing that the problem still occurs.