note 110957 added to function.define

this is not fully documented and (maybe) is not such a good idea to use, just because we don't really know how many versions it will work, but oh well... defining at runtime a constant inside a class which is inside a namespace: not so trivial huh? well, there is a way, more or less the problem: <?php namespace Test { class Something { function Init () { // the typical case would be define('boom',$some_var) but for making it easy there's no vars in here define ( 'boom', "bang" ); } } // keeping it short: calling Init() and bla bla bla, consider the define done } // works echo boom; // won't work (Fatal error: Undefined class constant 'boom' in bla bla bla) echo Test\Something::boom; // obviously won't work either echo Something::boom; // yay! it works, no surprise, but still in the global scope not quite what we want/need echo constant('boom'); // this would be nicer, but... won't work echo constant('Something::boom'); // nopes echo constant('Test\Something::boom'); ?> no luck with constants in classes huh? as we already know, defining the constant like that will create it in the global scope rather than inside the class consider defining like this instead: <?php namespace Test { class Something { function Init () { // the typical case would be define('boom',$some_var) but for making it easy there's no vars in here define ( 'Test\System\boom', "bang" ); } } } // it works, just like that echo Test\Something\boom; // with uses it works just as fine, feel free to use alias also use Test\Something as ST; echo ST\boom; // obviously this works echo constant('Test\Something\boom'); // but this won't echo constant('Something\boom'); echo constant('ST\boom'); // also, like before, it doesn't work like a "normal" constant defined in compiling time so it does not work like this: echo Test\Something::boom; ?> that means, in the code we seem to just "fake" the complete path to the constant, but surprisingly it is indeed sensitive to uses and aliases as well, making them quite a bit desirable because the define function gets a string as a parameter for the constant name, there is little to no trouble when making more dynamic classes or migrating to somewhere else in the code: <?php // bla bla bla define ( __NAMESPACE__ . '\' . __CLASS__ . '\boom', 'bang' ); // bla bla bla ?> ---- Server IP: 69.147.83.199 Probable Submitter: 95.18.119.107 ---- Manual Page -- http://php.net/manual/en/function.define.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/110957 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/110957 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/110957 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php