PHP 5.3 and '::'

Question

I started into PHP with 5.3 and am using the '::' to access constants ex; class::const. However, when I try to use my code in an older PHP namely 5.1.6 and 5.2.12, I get an error that the '::' is unexpected.

How do I access constants in these older versions of PHP5?

Answer 1

ClassName::constant should work. According to the documentation , the following syntax is new in PHP 5.3:

$classname = "MyClass";
echo $classname::constant . "\n"; // As of PHP 5.3.0

$class = new MyClass();
$class->showConstant();

echo $class::constant."\n"; // As of PHP 5.3.0

A more complete code example/reduction may help with debugging.

Answer 2

It should be:

ClassName::CONSTANT_NAME

This should work in all versions of PHP 5.

Answer 3

With the :: operator you can call only the static methods or access to the static variables/constants of a class.
The proper way is className::method() or className::publicVariable. Inside the static methods you can't refer to this because it's not called on a object, but from a non-static method you can access to a static varibale.

Anyway, the only new feature of PHP 5.3 about the :: operator is the ability to use a $string that contains the className.

Post please the revelant part of the code

Answer 4

I had the same problem accessing class constants via the class name so I resorted to getters:

public function getSomeConstant() {
    return self::SomeConstant;
}

and in the parts where I needed it:

className::getSomeConstant();

Edit: in PHP < 5.3 that is...