Using variable content to name a class

PHP list, I suspect this is a rather basic concept, but I could not find the specifics in the online manual. I have a set of classes, and the name of each class is stored in a column in a table in my MySQL database. When I want to create an object from one of my classes, I also query the database to get a bunch of data the object needs, along with its name. So what I end up with is a variable with the name of the class that I want to use stored as a string. This means that I want to create an object by naming which class with the contents of a variable: $className = "nameFromDatabase"; $object = new $className(); Is this possible? I hope I've asked my question clearly. Thank you for any advice. -- Dave M G