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Magic constants

There are a few magical constants that change depending on where they are used. For example, the value of __LINE__ depends on the line that it's used on in a script. All these "magical" constants are resolved at compile time, unlike regular constants, which are resolved at runtime. These special constants are case-insensitive and are as follows:

PHP's magic constants
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__LINE__ The current line number of the file.
__FILE__ The full path and filename of the file with symlinks resolved. If used inside an include, the name of the included file is returned.
__DIR__ The directory of the file. If used inside an include, the directory of the included file is returned. This is equivalent to dirname(__FILE__). This directory name does not have a trailing slash unless it is the root directory.
__FUNCTION__ The function name, or {closure} for anonymous functions.
__CLASS__ The class name. The class name includes the namespace it was declared in (e.g. Foo\Bar). When used inside a trait method, __CLASS__ is the name of the class the trait is used in.
__TRAIT__ The trait name. The trait name includes the namespace it was declared in (e.g. Foo\Bar).
__METHOD__ The class method name.
__PROPERTY__ Only valid inside a property hook. It is equal to the name of the property.
__NAMESPACE__ The name of the current namespace.
ClassName::class The fully qualified class name.

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User Contributed Notes 3 notes

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2
Rich
1 year ago
<?php

namespace My\App {
class
Api {
public static
fetch() {
print
__FUNCTION__ . "\n"; // outputs fetch
print __METHOD__ . "\n"; // outputs My\App\Api::fetch
}
}

Api::fetch();
}

namespace {
My\App\Api::fetch();
}
?>

__METHOD__ outputs a fully qualified method name; __FUNCTION__ when used in a method, outputs just the method name.
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0
chris at ocproducts dot com
1 year ago
Note that __CLASS__ and __METHOD__ both reference the class the code is written in, not whatever the object class is. E.g. if you have an object of class B inheriting from class A, any usage of __CLASS__ in class A is going to give "A".
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0
theking2 at king dot ma
2 years ago
If PHP is run inside a web server request there is an important difference between the __DIR__ constant and $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].

Where __DIR__ of a PHP script contained within a sub-folder will include the complete server path $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] will contain a server path up to the _root_ of the application. This can be helpful when for instance an auto-loader is defined in an include file sitting inside a sub-folder and where the classes are located in another folder at the root of the application.
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