If I am reading your situation correctly, you want to be able to reference the catalogue for product information from the cart?
If this is the case, perhaps the cart should be a container for "PurchaseItem" objects which contain the essential data (ie price, weight) and behaviours (calcShippingCost(), calcTax(), getProductInfo() - the last which can pull the reference from your catalogue). Additional information about the PurchaseItem can be "lazy loaded" from the catalogue if needed (ie product description) to keep your PurchaseItem lite and purpose-oriented. As an added bonus, by containing the PurchaseItems within the cart you can easily provide convience methods to iterate over the collection for things like calculating the total weight, total price, etc. Regards, S On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:11 PM, kropotkin <enquir...@mms-oxford.com> wrote: > > Hi Steven > > The method doesn't effect the state of anything . It just returns some > information. The context is: > class A is the Catalogue and B is the Cart. Usually they are separate but I > want to show a flag relating to the basket/cart in the catalogue against > each product. Really I am putting the method in the Cart class because it > seems to logically belong there - for organisational reasons. I see what you > mean about coupling though. It could get messy! > > Regards > > Kropotkin > > > > > > Steven Siebert wrote: >> >> It depends. (always the expected answer with an OOP design question =) >> >> Generally, if the method you are calling on class A does not work >> on/effect the state of a specific object, its a canidate to be a >> static (class) method. However, you should be careful about coupling >> your objects and understand what you are doing when you do. If you >> feel comfortable for that method be a static method, though, you're >> probably good to do so. Generally....depending.... >> >> =) >> >> Hope this helps. >> >> Steve >> >> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:54 PM, kropotkin <enquir...@mms-oxford.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> Hi >>> >>> In general is it better to use a class method or object method? E.g I >>> have a >>> class A which provides certain functionality. I just want to use one of >>> its >>> methods in another class B. Is it better to inistantiate class A and do >>> and >>> object call or just do A->myMethod() ? The method doesn't need a >>> reference >>> to itself passed in so from that point of view it doesn't matter >>> >>> Thanks >>> >>> Justin >>> -- >>> View this message in context: >>> http://www.nabble.com/Class-method-or-Object-method--tp21732172p21732172.html >>> Sent from the mod_perl - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >>> >>> >> >> > > -- > View this message in context: > http://www.nabble.com/Class-method-or-Object-method--tp21732172p21733697.html > Sent from the mod_perl - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > >
