# Clearing Up Some Annoying PHP Static

**Published by:** [Continuations](https://continuations.com/)
**Published on:** 2009-08-27
**URL:** https://continuations.com/clearing-up-some-annoying-php-static

## Content

While on vacation I started some prep work for using MongoDB at DailyLit, which is mostly written in PHP. The prep work consists of creating a lightweight way of getting PHP objects in and out of MongoDB (I know there are some things out there already, but what’s the fun in that?). Here is a slightly simplified summary what I am shooting for:I like the idea of using static/class methods for retrieval because these will be generating one or more objects and I do not want to have to deal with separate factory or builder classes. Unfortunately, I encountered some annoying PHP static:This prints “Fruit” – what the flagnard? For my plan to work, I need this to print “Apple”. First, lets establish that “Apple” is not an unreasonable expectation. In Python, I can do the following:This prints “Apple” (well, actually it prints “__main__.Apple”). In Ruby, I can do this:

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