Creating an Instance of a PHP Class

May 15, 2011 by Webhead

Problem:

This works in PHP 5.3+:

$CLASS_NAME = 'TheName';

$class_instance = new $CLASS_NAME;

This doesn’t

define('CLASS_NAME', 'TheName');

$class_instance = new CLASS_NAME;

Workaround:

Use the way that works. There are other limitations with using a variable to create a class. Another way to create a class from a variable is by using:

$test = call_user_func(array($className, 'getInstance'));