Why PHP uses static methods in object context?

Question

I have the following code (like, for real, this is my real code) :

Answer 1

We may need more information about the FooBar declaration. Obviously, you cannot declare two methods foo() even if one is a static method and the other one an instance method:

class FooBar
{
  public static function foo()
  {
    return 'I am FooBar::foo().';
  }
  public function foo()
  {
    return 'I am FooBar->foo().';
  }
}
// result to Fatal error: Cannot redeclare FooBar::foo()

So, I suppose that you want to reach a magic __call() method, like so:

class FooBar
{
  public $foo = 'I am FooBar->foo().'; 
  // yes we can have a property with the same name than a method

  // this is the static method that we want to avoid
  public static function foo()
  {
    return 'I am FooBar::foo().';
  }

  // this is the method that should be call
  public function __call( $method , $arguments = array() )
  {
    if( isset( $this->$method ) ) // or anything else
    {
      return $this->$method; // or anything else
    }
    else
    {
      // restore fatal error
      trigger_error( sprintf( 'Call to undefined method %s::%s()' , get_class( $this ) , $method ) , E_USER_ERROR );
    }
  }

}

To achieve that, look at this piece of code:

$foobar = new FooBar;

try
{
  // safe way to detect if a method is static
  // @see http://php.net/manual/en/class.reflectionmethod.php
  $rfx = new ReflectionMethod( get_class( $foobar ).'::foo' );
  if( $rfx->isStatic() )
  {
    // the method exists and is static
    // but we do not want to call it directly
    // why not involving the magic public method `__call()`?
    // sounds like a plan...
    echo $foobar->__call( 'foo' );
  }
  else
  {
    // the method exists and is not static
    echo $foobar->foo();
  }
}
catch( ReflectionException $e )
{
  // the method does not exist, let's do some kind of magic
  echo $foobar->foo();
}