Inheritance in PHP - Creating child instance and calling parent method - php

Question

I have something like this:
class MyParent {
protected static $object;
protected static $db_fields;
public function delete() {
// delete stuff
}
public static function find_by_id($id = 0) {
global $database;
$result_array = self::find_by_sql("SELECT * FROM " . static::$table_name . " WHERE id=" . $database -> escape_value($id) . " LIMIT 1");
return !empty($result_array) ? array_shift($result_array) : false;
}
public static function find_by_sql($sql = "") {
global $database;
// Do Query
$result_set = $database -> query($sql);
// Get Results
$object_array = array();
while ($row = $database -> fetch_array($result_set)) {
$object_array[] = self::instantiate($row);
}
return $object_array;
}
private static function instantiate($record) {
$object = self::$object;
foreach ($record as $attribute => $value) {
if (self::has_attribute($attribute)) {
$object -> $attribute = $value;
}
}
return $object;
}
}
class TheChild extends MyParent {
protected static $db_fields = array('id', 'name');
protected static $table_name = "my_table";
function __construct() {
self::$object = new TheChild;
}
}
$child= TheChild::find_by_id($_GET['id']);
$child->delete();
I get this: Call to undefined method stdClass::delete() referring to the last line above. What step am I missing for proper inheritance?

Answer 1

You never actually instanciate the TheChild class, which should be done by
$var = new TheChild();
except in TheChild constructor itself.
So, the static $object field is never affected (at least in your example), so affecting a field to it (the line $object -> $attribute = $value; ) causes the creation of an stdClass object, as demonstrated in this interactive PHP shell session:
php > class Z { public static $object; }
php > Z::$object->toto = 5;
PHP Warning: Creating default object from empty value in php shell code on line 1
php > var_dump(Z::$object);
object(stdClass)#1 (1) {
["toto"]=>
int(5)
}
This object does not have a delete method.
And as said before, actually creating a TheChild instance will result in an infinite recursion.
What you want to do is this, probably:
class TheChild extends MyParent {
protected static $db_fields = array('id', 'name');
protected static $table_name = "my_table";
function __construct() {
self::$object = $this;
}
}

Answer 2

Edit: Your updated code shows a COMPLETE different Example:
class MyParent {
protected static $object;
public function delete() {
// delete stuff
}
}
class TheChild extends MyParent {
function __construct() {
self::$object = new TheChild;
}
}
$child = new TheChild;
$child->delete();
Calling "Child's" Constructor from within "Child's" Constructor will result in an infinite loop:
function __construct() {
self::$object = new TheChild; // will trigger __construct on the child, which in turn will create a new child, and so on.
}
Maybe - i dont know what you try to achieve - you are looking for:
function __construct() {
self::$object = new MyParent;
}
ALSO note, that the :: Notation is not just a different Version for -> - it is completely different. One is a Static access, the other is a access on an actual object instance!