Can static function access non-static variables in php?

Question

<?php
    class Stat
    {
        public $var1='H';
        public static $staticVar = 'Static var';


        static function check()
        {

            echo $this->var1;               
            echo "<br />".self::$staticVar ."<br />";
            self::$staticVar = 'Changed Static';
            echo self::$staticVar."<br />";
        }
        function check2()
        {
            Stat::check();
            echo $this->var1;           
            echo "b";
        }
    }

?>

Can i use it like this

$a = new Stat();
$a->check2();

Solution 1

No. A static method will not have access to $this (as there is no $this to talk about in a static context).

If you need a reference to the current object within the static method, it is not a static method. You can however access static properties and functions from a non-static method.

Solution 2

As the other answers say, you can't use the instance methods in a static method. However, you can store a static property being an array of your instances. With some code like this:

private static $_instances = array();

public function __construct() {
    self::$_instances[] = $this;
}

This way, you can call a method on all the instances in a static method. With some code like this:

public static effItAll() {
    foreach (self::$_instances as $instance) {
        $instance->instanceMethod();
    }
}

Or you could also just store the last instance. Or some instance depending on the parameters. Whatever, you can just store any instance in a static property, thus being able to then call this instance in your static method.

Comments

[Carlos Arturo Alaniz]

You could do a $instance = new self(); so that you could call the non static variables, it goes against the static element purpose but you could do it haha