What does the PHP error message “Notice: Use of undefined constant” mean?

Question

PHP is writing this error in the logs: \"Notice: Use of undefined constant\".

Error in logs:

PHP Notice:  Use of undefined constant          


        

Answer 1

The error message is due to the unfortunate fact that PHP will implicitly declare an unknown token as a constant string of the same name.

That is, it's trying to interpret this (note the missing quote marks):

$_POST[department]

The only valid way this would be valid syntax in PHP is if there was previously a constant department defined. So sadly, rather than dying with a Fatal error at this point, it issues this Notice and acts as though a constant had been defined with the same name and value:

// Implicit declaration of constant called department with value 'department'
define('department', 'department');  

There are various ways you can get this error message, but they all have the same root cause - a token that could be a constant.

Strings missing quotes: $my_array[bad_key]

This is what the problem is in your case, and it's because you've got string array keys that haven't been quoted. Fixing the string keys will fix the bug:

Change:

$department = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST[department]);
...(etc)...

To:

$department = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['department']);
...(etc)...

Variable missing dollar sign: var_without_dollar

Another reason you might see this error message is if you leave off the $ from a variable, or $this-> from a member. Eg, either of the following would cause a similar error message:

my_local;   // should be $my_local
my_member;  // should be $this->my_member

Invalid character in variable name: $bad-variable-name

A similar but more subtle issue can result if you try to use a disallowed character in a variable name - a hyphen (-) instead of an underscore _ would be a common case.

For example, this is OK, since underscores are allowed in variable names:

if (123 === $my_var) {
  do_something();
}

But this isn't:

if (123 === $my-var) {
  do_something();
}

It'll be interpreted the same as this:

if (123 === $my - var) {  // variable $my minus constant 'var'
  do_something();
}

Referring to a class constant without specifying the class scope

In order to refer to a class constant you need to specify the class scope with ::, if you miss this off PHP will think you're talking about a global define().

Eg:

class MyClass {
  const MY_CONST = 123;

  public function my_method() {
    return self::MY_CONST;  // This is fine
  }


  public function my_method() {
    return MyClass::MY_CONST;  // This is fine
  }

  public function my_bad_method() {
    return MY_CONST;  // BUG - need to specify class scope
  }
}

Using a constant that's not defined in this version of PHP, or is defined in an extension that's not installed

There are some system-defined constants that only exist in newer versions of PHP, for example the mode option constants for round() such as PHP_ROUND_HALF_DOWN only exist in PHP 5.3 or later.

So if you tried to use this feature in PHP 5.2, say:

$rounded = round($my_var, 0, PHP_ROUND_HALF_DOWN);

You'd get this error message:

Use of undefined constant PHP_ROUND_HALF_DOWN - assumed 'PHP_ROUND_HALF_DOWN' Warning (2): Wrong parameter count for round()