Posted by Brent Baisley on 04/04/05 16:44

At the most basic level a class allows you to group your functions
together. On small projects, grouping of functions may not seem to buy
you anything. But the bigger the project gets, the more you would like
to be able to keep your functions separated into groups.

One simple advantage of classes is that they prevent naming conflicts
with your functions. This is very important when you are sharing code
since you don't know what another programmer named their functions.
What if you both name a function "get_one_record"? If you use classes,
you only need to keep the names of your classes unique. Which then
means you can use the same generic function name across all your
classes, and you interface within your classes in a consistent manner,
only the context changes.

For instance, you may have a class call "companies" and another called
"contacts". Within each you may have functions called "get_list",
"get_one" and "delete_one". Same function names, but in different
classes so they don't conflict. Now you could create a generic
interface to view a list, view a record or delete a record. What data
is displayed depends on which class you load. The function names are
all the same, so you don't need to change your code when you change the
context (companies or contacts).

This is hardly a tutorial on OOP. But maybe it will give you an idea of
the benefits of using classes.


On Apr 4, 2005, at 12:28 AM, DuSTiN KRySaK wrote:

> Novice PHPer, and i am wondering why one would use a function instead
> of a class (or object)? They seem to server very similar in use.
>
> The way I see it, is a function if for repeated use in a project
> specific manner, where as a class could be used for many projects.
>
> is this correct?
>
> Although one could just include the function library in multiple
> projects.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Dustin
>
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Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577

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