On Thursday, Jan 30, 2003, at 07:17 US/Pacific, webguy wrote:
> Look at Seans excellent rules ..
> http://www.corfield.org/coldfusion/codingStandards.htm
Thanx. Yes, I highly recommend you use getter/setter methods. Ray gave
a good reason but wasn't specific. Here's some more detail:
It may be a simple property today but in the future it might be
calculated or it might be refactored into another CFC: using getter /
setter methods means your changes will be localized (you only have to
change the CFC, not all the code that uses it).
It may be a simple property today but in the future, you might want to
apply validation when you set it (e.g., an age should be a positive
integer). You can add validation logic to the setter - without changing
code that uses the CFC.
Furthermore, you want to use the unnamed scope for your instance data
(and this seems to be a popular idiom):
<!--- person.cfc --->
<cfcomponent>
<!--- create a single 'handle' for your instance data: --->
<cfset instance = structNew()>
<!--- setter: --->
<cffunction name="setFirstName" returntype="person">
<cfargument name="firstName" type="string" required="true">
<cfset instance.firstName = arguments.firstName>
<cfreturn this>
</cffunction>
<!--- getter: --->
<cffunction name="getFirstName" returntype="string">
<cfreturn instance.firstName>
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>
Some people have their setter functions return the object (as above),
others prefer to return nothing - like this:
<cffunction name="setFirstName" returntype="void">
<cfargument name="firstName" type="string" required="true">
<cfset instance.firstName = arguments.firstName>
</cffunction>
I prefer the former since you can then "chain" method calls in cfscript:
<cfscript>
me = createObject("component","person");
me.setFirstName("Sean").setLastName("Corfield");
</cfscript>
With the latter style of function definition, you have to say:
<cfscript>
me = createObject("component","person");
me.setFirstName("Sean");
me.setLastName("Corfield");
</cfscript>
Sean A Corfield -- Director, Architecture
Web Technology Group -- Macromedia, Inc.
tel: (415) 252-2287 -- cell: (415) 717-8473
aim/iChat: seancorfield -- http://www.macromedia.com
An Architect's View -- http://www.macromedia.com/go/arch_blog
ColdFusion MX and JRun 4 now available for Mac OS X!
http://www.macromedia.com/go/cfmxosx
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