Can you get a method name from within a method in PHP?

Is it possible to do something like this?

public function something() {
    $thisMethodName = method_get_name(); 
}

Where method_get_name() returns the method's name?

Solution 1:

Sure, you want the magic constants.

function myFunction() { print __FUNCTION__." in ".__FILE__." at ".__LINE__."\n"; }

Find out more from the php manual

Solution 2:

While you can use the magic constant __METHOD__ I would highly recommend checking out PHP's reflection. This is supported in PHP5.

$modelReflector = new ReflectionClass(__CLASS__);
$method = $modelReflector->getMethod(__METHOD__);

You can then do kick-ass stuff like inspect the signature, etc.

Solution 3:

As smartj suggested you can try the magic constant __METHOD__, but remember that this will return a string containing also your class name, i.e. 'MyClass::something'. Using __FUNCTION__ instead will return 'something'.

Solution 4:

Using __FUNCTION__ is the way to go instead of:

 public function something() {
     $thisMethodName = "something";
 }

which is flawed in several ways adding a variable and memory to store the method name as a string and duplicating what already exists, thus unnecessarily adding resources used, (if you do this for a large library with many methods, it matters greatly).

Magic constants in PHP are guaranteed not to change, while this approach would require applicable editing if the method name were changed, thus introducing the potential for an inconsistency (note, I did say potentially, meaning simply it is an otherwise unnecessary edit if the magic constant were used instead).

The time and effort to name a variable, re-type the method name as a string assigned to that unnecessary variable and of course properly referencing the variable name, which is the motivation for PHP supplying magic constants to begin with (and refuting any claim __FUNCTION__ is unnecessary).