Translations:Developers/Object oriented programming in PHP/Methods/9/en

Methods declared as static are not bound to a concrete object of the class and can only be executed by using the scope resolution operator ::. self (self::myMethod), parent (parent::myMethod) or a name of an available class (MyClass::myMethod) are valid working with the operator. Static methods can not use $this in their definitions, because they are not invoked by an object, where $this</tt> would be the reference to. They can't operate on an object's normal properties, but they can (and normally do) operate on static properties.