How to get a variable name as a string in PHP?

Question

Say i have this PHP code:

$FooBar = \"a string\";

i then need a function like this:

print_var_name($FooBar);

Answer 1

It may be considered quick and dirty, but my own personal preference is to use a function/method like this:

public function getVarName($var) {      
  $tmp = array($var => '');
  $keys = array_keys($tmp);
  return trim($keys[0]);
}

basically it just creates an associative array containing one null/empty element, using as a key the variable for which you want the name.

we then get the value of that key using array_keys and return it.

obviously this gets messy quick and wouldn't be desirable in a production environment, but it works for the problem presented.