You don't need to wait for PHP 5.3 if you're able to conceive of a way to do this outside of a static context. In php 5.2.9, in a non-static method of the parent class, you can do:

get_class($this);

and it will return the name of the child class as a string.

i.e.

class Parent() {    function __construct() {        echo 'Parent class: ' . get_class() . "\n" . 'Child class: ' . get_class($this);    }}class Child() {    function __construct() {        parent::construct();    }}$x = new Child();

this will output:

Parent class: ParentChild class: Child

sweet huh?

in short. this is not possible. in php4 you could implement a terrible hack (examine the debug_backtrace()) but that method does not work in PHP5. references:

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edit: an example of late static binding in PHP 5.3 (mentioned in comments). note there are potential problems in it's current implementation (src).

class Base {    public static function whoAmI() {        return get_called_class();    }}class User extends Base {}print Base::whoAmI(); // prints "Base"print User::whoAmI(); // prints "User"

I know this question is really old, but for those looking for a more practical solution than defining a property in every class containing the class name:

You can use the static keyword for this.

As explained in this contributor note in the php documentation

the static keyword can be used inside a super class to access the sub class from which a method is called.

Example:

class Base{    public static function init() // Initializes a new instance of the static class    {        return new static();    }    public static function getClass() // Get static class    {        return static::class;    }    public function getStaticClass() // Non-static function to get static class    {        return static::class;    }}class Child extends Base{}$child = Child::init();         // Initializes a new instance of the Child class                                // Output:var_dump($child);               // object(Child)#1 (0) {}echo $child->getStaticClass();  // Childecho Child::getClass();         // Child