How can I call a static method from a class if all I have is a string of the class name?

Question

How would I get something like this to work?

$class_name = \'ClassPeer\';
$class_name::doSomething();

Answer 1

Reflection (PHP 5 supports it) is how you'd do this. Read that page and you should be able to figure out how to invoke the function like that.

$func = new ReflectionFunction('somefunction');
$func->invoke();

Documentation Link

Answer 2

if you need to adjust the namespace

$call = call_user_func(array('\\App\\Models\\'.$class_name, "doSomething"));

Answer 3

Depending on version of PHP:

call_user_func(array($class_name, 'doSomething'));
call_user_func($class_name .'::doSomething'); // >5.2.3

Answer 4

To unleash the power of IDE autocomplete and error detection, use this:

$class_name = 'ClassPeer';

$r = new \ReflectionClass($class_name );

// @param ClassPeer $instance

$instance =  $r->newInstanceWithoutConstructor();

//$class_name->doSomething();
$instance->doSomething();

Basically here we are calling the static method on an instance of the class.

Answer 5

After I have almost missed the simplest solution from VolkerK, I have decided to extend and put it in a post. This is how to call the static members on the instance class

// calling class static method
$className = get_class($this);
$result = $className::caluclate($arg1, $arg2);

// using class static member
foreach ($className::$fields as $field) {
  :
}

Answer 6

Use call_user_func. Also read up on PHP callbacks.

call_user_func(array($class_name, 'doSomething'), $arguments);