How does Laravel dynamically call a class method statically without implicitly using the static keyword for the method in PHP?

Question

Laravel makes it possible to call a class method using the scope resolution operator (::) without the method being statically declared.

In PHP you can only call static methods only when they are declared as such, for example:

class User {

   public static function getAge() { ... } 

}

Can be called as User::getAge();

How can this be done in a normal PHP class. I guess for it to be possible it needs to be done using a design pattern or something else. Can anyone help me out?

So what I meant by the above was is it possible to instantiate a class and call it's method statically in php. Since that feature was dropped from previous versions

class Student {

     public function examScore($mark_one, $mark_two) {
         //some code here
     }

}

How do access it in this manner

$student = new Student;
$student::examScore(20, 40);

And I talked about Laravel because it allows you to alias your classes and call it in this manner Student::examScore(20,40);

Something called facade pattern or so. An explanation with example can help.

After a long search I found an article that kind of explains it here:

https://www.sitepoint.com/how-laravel-facades-work-and-how-to-use-them-elsewhere

Answer 1

My guess here is that your User class actually extends the Laravel Model class.

This class implements some of PHPs so called magic methods. You can find our about them here: https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.magic.php

One of these is __callStatic .

In Model.php :

/**
 * Handle dynamic static method calls into the method.
 *
 * @param  string  $method
 * @param  array  $parameters
 * @return mixed
 */
public static function __callStatic($method, $parameters)
{
    return (new static)->$method(...$parameters);
}