CODEWITHSUNDEEP
php
Justin
Justin

Reputation: 193

Undefined property of object when using define()

Why can I not do something like the following when I know that the property of myobject is going to be declared already:

define('title','boats');

myobject->title;

but this works:

myobject->boats

Is this even good practice?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 76

Answers (2)

Berry Langerak
Berry Langerak

Reputation: 18859

Why can I not do something like the following when I know that the property of myobject is going to be declared already:

Probably because PHP expects you to call it with a method name. There are options, though:

<?php
define( 'METHOD', 'bar' );

class Foo {
    public function bar( ) {
        echo "Foo->bar( ) called.\n";
    }
}

$foo = new Foo;
call_user_func( array( $foo, METHOD ) );

// or
$method = METHOD;
$foo->$method( );

EDIT: Ah, I seem to have misunderstood. My version is for calling methods of which the name is defined in a constant, whereas you were looking for a way of calling properties. Well, I'll leave it in here for future reference anyway.

Upvotes: 1

Phil
Phil

Reputation: 164910

You can't use

$myobject->title

as this is attempting to access the title property of your object. If this property does not exist, an error will be triggered.

You can use

$myobject->{title}

but I'd rather see you use a variable instead of a constant, eg

$title = 'boats';
echo $myobject->$title;

Ideally, you will know which property you want to access and use its name appropriately

$myobject->boats

Upvotes: 3

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