Introduction

To fix “Using $this when not in object context”, you can make the static method that is calling $this non-static.

No matter if you’re using CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Laravel, Symfony, WordPress, Yii, or anything else, $this is a variable that refers to the current object. Therefore, it’s natural to not being allowed to call it from a static method.

How to fix “Using $this when not in object context”, by example

Take this code and try to run it. You will see “Using $this when not in object context” again.

class Foo {
    public static function bar() {
        // This is bad because we are in a static method.
        $this->baz();
    }
    
    public function baz() {
    }
}

Foo::bar();

As you can see, we are trying to call baz(), which is a non-static method, from a static method.

As mentioned above, we need to:

1. Remove the static keyword from bar()’s declaration;
2. Create an instance of Foo and call bar() from there.

class Foo {
    public function bar() {
        $this->baz();
    }
    
    public function baz() {
    }
}

$foo = new Foo;
$foo->bar();

You could also make the baz method static depending on your initial intention:

class Foo {
    public static function bar() {
        static::baz();
    }
    
    public static function baz() {
    }
}