PHP anonymous class without instance

Question

Is there a way of declaring an anonymous class that has no instance?

I'd like to do something like this:

$myclass = (class {
    public $a;
})::class;

$myobject = new $myclass;

This is something you can do with named classes, but the above code throws a syntax error.

The error you get tells you what is wrong. Once you fixed that you will get the error telling you that no, what you want is not possible. `Fatal error: Dynamic class names are not allowed in compile-time ::class fetch in` neither would it make that much sense. — PeeHaa, Jun 11 '16 at 16:23
@PeeHaa Thanks. It would make sense for me, I'd like to test named constructors on subclasses of an abstract class. I'd like to make many different subclasses and I wouldn't like to pollute my tests file with them — balping, Jun 11 '16 at 16:44

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 11 '16 at 16:51

6

Finally, I was able to make a workaround thanks to this comment at php.net

$myclass = get_class(new class {
    public $a;
});

$myobject = new $myclass;

answered Jun 11 '16 at 16:51

balping

Why can't you just do `$myclass = new class { public $a; };`? – PeeHaa Jun 11 '16 at 17:08
@PeeHaa Because I'd like to use named constructors like: `$myobject = $myclass::fromString('abc')` where `fromString` returns a new instance – balping Jun 11 '16 at 17:40
1

This workaround simply creates an instance and then get the class from this instance. So it is not « without instance ». – Skrol29 Mar 05 '21 at 16:47

1 Answers1