Posted by amygdala on 04/13/07 02:24

"Jerry Stuckle" <jstucklex@attglobal.net> schreef in bericht
news:_L2dncAv8ZxOfIPbnZ2dnUVZ_sOknZ2d@comcast.com...
> amygdala wrote:

<snip>


> Definitely properties should be private. They're part of the
> implementation.
>
> However, I often have lots of public methods. For instance, I'll have a
> getXXX method to fetch 'xxx'. And I may have a setxxx method to set it,
> if that makes sense - the latter doing validation on the parameter passed,
> if necessary.
>
> So potentially in a table with 25 columns I can have 25 getXXX and 25
> setXXX methods (and 25 private variables, one for each column), database
> related methods, etc. This can easily come out to 60-70 public methods -
> and often I'll have some private ones, also.

Well, this is just exactly what I am trying to avoid. I have (unfinished)
__get and __set methods in the base class DB_Table that should take care of
this in one go.

> But don't try to put all of your variables in one 'fieldspec' array. While
> it will work, it will also be almost impossible to understand later and
> even worse to maintain.

Hmm, you are no doubt much more experienced in this field, but my gutfeeling
says I have to disagree on this one. The whole point of creating this
framework for me is to avoid the cumbersome task of creating getter and
setter functions for each and every table field. Thus I'm declaring one
generic fieldSpecs array that provides properties for the fields so that the
generic getters and setters as well as the generic Validator will take care
of the rest. I don't see the fieldSpecs array becoming to difficult to
understand quickly for me in the future.

Still, this leaves me wondering: why doesn't a child class just simply
inherite the 'getFieldSpecs' function and let self::$fieldSpecs refer to the
$fieldSpecs in the child class? Should this not be the basics of OOP? What
am I missing here? Or better yet: how can this be achieved?

Thanks for your time people. Much appreciated!

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