Workaround for Limited Syntax in Class Property Declarations

In PHP, class constants and property declarations require primitive values as default values. This limitation can be a hindrance when attempting to use expressions in these declarations.

To address this issue, consider the following workaround:

• Define a getter function for the desired property. In the getter function, perform the necessary calculations or property initialization using expressions.
• In the class constructor, call the getter function to set the property value.

For example, suppose we want a class with a "STRING_OPTIONS" property that allows for binary bitwise operations to toggle various string formatting options. The following code demonstrates the workaround:

class SDK {

    private $STRING_OPTIONS;

    public function getStringOptions() {
        // Define bitwise values for string formatting options
        $options = array(
            'STRING_NONE' => 0,
            'STRING_STRIP_COLOR' => 1  1  self::STRING_STRIP_COLOR | self::STRING_STRIP_LANG,
            'STRING_HTML' => 1  1  1  1 STRING_OPTIONS = $this->getStringOptions();
    }
}

// Usage
$SDK = new SDK();

echo $SDK->STRING_OPTIONS; // Output: 64 (1 
In this workaround, the getStringOptions() function performs the bitwise calculations and returns the desired value for the STRING_OPTIONS property. The constructor then calls this function to set the property at runtime.
This approach maintains readability and future expandability while adhering to PHP's syntax limitations in class property declarations.