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I have to agree that OOP is much better in abstracting than user defined
functions... why?
To return some data and display in a HTML table it i do:
$db = new DB;
$db->query("SELECT foo from bar");
$t = new Table;
echo $t->create($db->data);
Pretty easy. Now i could have all these have be functions
$data = query($connection_details,"SELECT foo from bar");
echo create_table($data);
But....
What if i wanted a special connection specified as myDB that was consistant
through out my site? Or what if my table creation function has over 30
different options setable (colours, fonts, spacing by cells, columns, rows
and table)? This becomes difficult with pure functions as you end up with
echo
create_table($data,"nowrap","black",null,"white",null,null,null,"Tahoma",12,
null,null,null,array(array("bold")));
instead of
$t = new Table;
$t->options = "nowrap";
$t->heading["bgcolor"] = "black";
$t->heading["fontcolor"] = "white";
$t->global["font"] = "tahoma";
$t->global["fontsize"] = 12;
$t->column["total"]["format"] = "bold";
echo $t->create($db->data);
// Create another table with similiar properties, but different data
echo $t->create($mydb->data);
What if wanted to make my table definition reusable (you would have to make
sure all these class's are included like your functions)
class myTable extends Table {
var $options = "nowrap";
var $heading["bgcolor"] = "black";
var $heading["fontcolor"] = "white";
var $global["font"] = "tahoma";
var $global["fontsize"] = 12;
var $column["total"]["format"] = "bold";
}
Then from then on you could just call
$t = new myTable;
echo $t->create($db->data);
Now if change my definition of what a myTable should look like i change it
once, not in everyfile as you might with functions. (You could however
define a new function called create_myTable that does something similiar).
The last benefit is that with phpdoc and similiar tools class's can be
autodocumented which is very nice.
Readability, maintainability and reusability are much higher with OOP.
Mark Nold
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Senior Consultant
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Warrington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 4:42 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PHP] OOP in web development
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Joe
Sheble (Wizaerd)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
depending on the nature of what you are doing, one of the things
that i like about using classes is the ability to group functionality
under a larger structure, the class. Instead of having a series of
disconnected functions, i can instead write them as class methods.
another feature that is a basic feature of oop stuff is the idea of
inheritence. So you can have a base class (CAR) that defines
behaviour common to all instanaces of that class (var wheels, var door,
method car start, method car turn signal on, etc...) Then you can
subclass the CAR class to define specific behaviour for a particular
car model (SPORTSCAR - var turbo, method car turbo on, etc..).
again, depending on what you are doing, this can be very beneficial.
I suggest you start small and also take a look at other people's code.
You will find alot of classes out there that make alot of sense and
can give you ideas of new ways of doing things....
Jeff
> I've been using PHP for over a year now and have been successfully
> running three different websites developed with PHP, but I've never
> done anything with classes or objects. Even when returning data from a
> mySQL database, I use mysql_fetch_array() instead of
> mysql_fetch_object().
>
> What am I missing by not using objects and classes, other than
> reusability? What are the real benefits to using OOPs in PHP?
>
>
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