Hi This is a good point made by Paul...
> On 5 Oct 2018, at 09:15, Paul Dennis via 4D_Tech <[email protected]> wrote: > > With tables and records and the structure it's relatively > straightforward to track through the code and work out what's going on. I > can see this being a real problem with objects. There just doesn't seem to > be any visibility. The data could be buried many layers down in an object > let alone all the quotes, dots and semi colons involved I also agree with Kirk’s last post about unncecessary redundancy when you have a perfectly working programming paradigm already - and they do indeed take some documenting (at least in the code) - and you can get yourself tied in knots, especially when you go even one level of object hierarchy. Despite that, I have recently taken the leap to using objects as arguments in methods and passing parameters “by name” rather than using $1..$N. I did this because Laurent Ribardierre and JPR recommended this approach so categorically at the last advanced developers class. Also, when they demoed the new features of v17 and I saw the roadmap I can kind of see why - 4D want to drastically loosen the coupling between the forms layer, the code and the database engine. So what I’m doing now is just using a single object to hold all form properties that I’d previously used globals for. Then just use globals where required for active objects like menus. You can preserve some of the formality of the old “$1…$2” approach by writing wrappers to “receive” the object properties and simultaneously “define” the form parameters - so that an error can be thrown is something’s missing from the mandatory argument list for example. But one of the advantages of this new approach I’ve noticed is massive flexibility when it comes to initialising the form. It’s much easier to refactor or add/remove parameters. (Say you had a function that opened the form and that function took some initial states as $1…$n. Just passing a single object instead saves having to support the argument list right up and down the call chain. Also, I’m still on v15 but at the end of the day the new dot notation referenced object properties will not be much different from the old global variable approach. Peter ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: https://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:[email protected] **********************************************************************
