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
– PeeHaa, Commented Jun 11, 2016 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
– balping, Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 16:44

balping · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-11 16:51:36Z

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, 2016 at 16:51

balping

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3 Comments

Why can't you just do $myclass = new class { public $a; };?

@PeeHaa Because I'd like to use named constructors like: $myobject = $myclass::fromString('abc') where fromString returns a new instance

This workaround simply creates an instance and then get the class from this instance. So it is not « without instance ».