I agree that a plain old function would be the best solution in this
situation. I think classes full of static methods provide no real value,
from an object-oriented design perspective. All you get is a bunch of
extra typing.
It's true the framework currently has no place for normal function
libraries, but, personally, I think it would be better to make one than
to start introducing such static classes. The core contributors to this
framework are really smart people; they should be more than capable of
keeping these kinds of function libraries from getting out of control.
Just my $0.02,
Bryce Lohr
Jack Sleight wrote:
Shahar Evron wrote:
True, a function is a natural solution - but I think most core people
would consider adding functions to ZF to be against all design concepts.
There is a middle path of course - utility classes grouping static
methods.
Yeah, I guess that in order to fit in with the framework design static
classes would make the most sense. I didn't suggest it because I've
read articles by people that say you shouldn't use classes for simply
grouping static methods; but to be honest I don't really see why it
matters so much, especially if it solves a common problem.
class Zend_Utility_String {
/**
* Calculate the byte-length of a string
*
* @param string $string * @return integer String length
*/
static public function ByteLength($string);
/**
* Split a string into words, grouping quoted phrases together
*
* @param string $string * @param string $groupBy
* @return array Tokenized words
*/
static public function tokenize($string, $groupBy = '"');
static public function ...
}
class Zend_Utility_Math
{
static public function ...
}
// .. and so on - // I'd even rename classes like Zend_Debug to
Zend_Utility_Debug...
Yeah, I think something like this would be very beneficial, and I'm
sure the need for utility methods will come up again. In fact there
are probably quite a few static methods in the framework already that
could be refactored into such classes, to make them easily available.
