PHP traits - defining generic constants

You could also use static variables. They can be used in the class or the trait itself. - Works fine for me as a replacement for const.

trait myTrait {
    static $someVarA = "my specific content";
    static $someVarB = "my second specific content";
}

class myCustomClass {
    use myTrait;

    public function hello()
    {
        return self::$someVarA;
    }
}

To limit the scope of your constants, you can define them inside a namespace:

namespace Test;

const Foo = 123;

// generic functions or classes

echo Foo;
echo namespace\Foo;

A downside of this approach is that autoloading won't work for constants, at least not for 5.4; the typical way around this is to wrap those constants in a static class, i.e.:

namespace Test;

class Bar
{
    const Foo = 123;
}

I ended up using user sectus's suggestion of interfaces as it feels like the least-problematic way of handling this. Using an interface to store constants rather than API contracts has a bad smell about it though so maybe this issue is more about OO design than trait implementation.

interface Definition
{
    const SOME_CONST = 'someconst';
    const SOME_OTHER_CONST = 'someotherconst';
}

trait Base
{
    // Generic functions
}

class A implements Definition
{
    use Base;
}

class B implements Definition
{
    use Base;
}

Which allows for:

A::SOME_CONST;
B::SOME_CONST;