Answer by David Spector for How to initialize static variables

In my case, I'm using both static and nonstatic class properties, and I might even have main program code referencing the static part of the class before defining the class. Since static portions of classes don't have constructors, just add a manual constructor to initialize any variables requiring nontrivial calculation:

class A   {   static $a; // Initialized by Init()   static function Init()      {      A::$a=nontrivial();      {   }...A::Init();    // Initialize static part of class...$obj=new A(); // Using initialized class as an object