Get value of dynamically chosen class constant in PHP

I would like to be able to do something like this:

class ThingIDs
{
    const Something = 1;
    const AnotherThing = 2;
}

$thing = 'Something';
$id = ThingIDs::$thing;

This doesn't work. Is there a straightforward way of doing something equivalent? Note that I'm stuck with the class; it's in a library I can't rewrite. I'm writing code that takes arguments on the command line, and I would really like it to take symbolic names instead of id numbers.

Solution 1:

Use the constant() function:

$id = constant("ThingIDs::$thing");

Solution 2:

Use Reflection

$r = new ReflectionClass('ThingIDs');
$id = $r->getConstant($thing);

Solution 3:

If you are using namespaces, you should include the namespace with the class.

echo constant('My\Application\ThingClass::ThingConstant'); 

Solution 4:

Helper function

You can use a function like this:

function class_constant($class, $constant)
{
    if ( ! is_string($class)) {
        $class = get_class($class);
    }

    return constant($class . '::' . $constant);
}

It takes two arguments:

• Class name or object instance
• Class constant name

If an object instance is passed, its class name is inferred. If you use PHP 7, you can use ::class to pass appropriate class name without having to think about namespaces.

Examples

class MyClass
{
    const MY_CONSTANT = 'value';
}

class_constant('MyClass', 'MY_CONSTANT'); # 'value'
class_constant(MyClass::class, 'MY_CONSTANT'); # 'value' (PHP 7 only)

$myInstance = new MyClass;
class_constant($myInstance, 'MY_CONSTANT'); # 'value'

Solution 5:

<?php

class Dude {
    const TEST = 'howdy';
}

function symbol_to_value($symbol, $class){
    $refl = new ReflectionClass($class);
    $enum = $refl->getConstants();
    return isset($enum[$symbol])?$enum[$symbol]:false;
}

// print 'howdy'
echo symbol_to_value('TEST', 'Dude');