Your "CFGURU dude" is correct. Publicly exposing data allows direct access to that data rather than forcing developers to access the data via get/set methods. This is dangerous because often times, you need to run enumeration and/or other methods in addition to changing a property value. Consider this simple example - suppose you have a shopping cart, and every time an item is added or it's quantity changed, the cart component runs a method to calculate shipping, tax, subtotals, and cart total so far. Allowing direct access to the quantities of items in the cart would allow for quantity values to change without the tax, shipping, subtotals, and cart total values being updated to reflect the new contents of the cart. Making all of this data private, and creating a setQuantity() method that allows the quantity of any item in the cart to be changed, prevents the earlier scenario by maintaining control over the cde that is executed whenever a cart item quantity changes.
~Simon Simon Horwith Macromedia Certified Instructor Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Certified Flash MX Developer CFDJList - List Administrator Fig Leaf Software 1400 16th St NW, # 220 Washington DC 20036 202.797.6570 (direct line) www.figleaf.com -----Original Message----- From: Scott Barnes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2003 2:42 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [CFCDev] this.scope vs private.scope I have been researching the reasons for using private variables within a cfc vs using the public this.scope concept? I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this thus far? One thing that a fellow CF`GERU dude mentioned was that people could bypass the setter/getter methods and go directly to manipulation of the 'object.property = ""' thus at the end of the objects save() to data layer, could become problematic (ie expecting a boolean value and they mispelled true with say trrue or something silly like that. Whats the peers of the community have to say on such a matter? Scott Barnes Snr Developer eCommerce Department Tourism Queensland / Sunlover Holidays [EMAIL PROTECTED] ph: (07) 3535 5066 ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word 'unsubscribe cfcdev' in the message of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by Mindtool, Corporation (www.mindtool.com). ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word 'unsubscribe cfcdev' in the message of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by Mindtool, Corporation (www.mindtool.com).
