I need to bea be able to use a static variable set in a class that extends a base class... from the base class.

Consider this:

class Animal {
    public static $color = 'black';

    public static function get_color()
    {
        return self::$color;
    }
}

class Dog extends Animal {
    public static $color = 'brown';
}

echo Animal::get_color(); // prints 'black'
echo Dog::get_color(); // also prints 'black'

This works wonderfully in PHP 5.3.x (Dog::get_color() prints 'brown') since it has late static binding. But my production server runs PHP 5.2.11 and so I need to adapt my script.

Is there a somewhat pretty workaround to solve this issue?

Cheers!
Christoffer

EDIT: The goal

As noted below, this is a very much simplified example of what I am trying to accomplish. If I provide you with the two options I have used to solve my problem (and the problem itself) someone might have a different solution than I...

I have built a base database model that contains functions like "find", "find_by" and "find_all" (all static).

In PHP 5.3 there is a function called get_called_class() which I currently use to determine the called class's name, and then use it to map against the correct database table. Ex class User would point to users.

get_called_class() doesn't exist in PHP 5.2.x and the hack implementations I've found are very unreliable. Then I turned to this option of using a static variable in all model classes which contain the class name.

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