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Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:59:56 +0200
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To: Marcus Boerger <helly@php.net>
Cc: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <444E0854.2000804@emini.dk> <200604251602.42837.bu@orbitel.bg> <444E2108.8050203@iamjochem.com> <749874265.20060426211537@marcus-boerger.de>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Static properties
From: edink@emini.dk (Edin Kadribasic)

Marcus Boerger wrote:
> It is just some decision that was taken that the newer OO stuff should be a
> bit more strict.

I don't remember any such decision. I don't even remember a discussion 
about it. I'm aware of the efforts of some people to make PHP less PHP 
and more Java and thus we end up in a situation where:

class foo{}; foo::$bar = 1;

is a fatal error. This makes things that I really like about PHP 
impossible. By now I'm used to being not constrained by a static 
language and having such restrictions placed on new features makes no 
sense to me.

I write code that does things like this:

class Customer
{
     function get($id)
     {
         $res = $DB->query("select * from customer where id=".((int)$id);
         while ($row = $DB->fetchRow($res)) {
             foreach ($row as $key = $value) {
                 $this->{$key} = $value;
              }
         }
     }
}

All nice and dynamic. Now, I thought why not make my site options work 
in a similar way but use class variables (a.k.a. static properties). So 
I made my options class

class options
{
     function load()
     {
         $res = $DB->query("select * from options");
         while ($row = $DB->fetchRow($res)) {
             self::${$row['KEY']} = $row['VALUE'];
         }
     }
}

so I could for example througout my code use simple:

if (options::$allow_anon) {
     ...
}

without having to make an istance of the class. Simple and beutiful PHP 
way. All I needed to do to get a new site option variable was to insert 
"into options(key, value) values ('foo', 'bar')" and I would instantly 
have my options::$foo.

Unfortunately I was faced with a fatal error about having to declare all 
static properties. I was afraid that this was not caused by any 
technical difficulty, but by desire to make PHP less PHP.

I propose that we remove this restriction in PHP 5.2.0 and that we 
consider this attitude towards making PHP more strict and less dynamic 
in the future.

Edin