Hi Chris,

nice thread, good questions - nice to see some real programming
theory being discussed - does us all some good :-)

here is my take, hth:

Chris W. Parker wrote:
Anas Mughal <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
    on Monday, September 19, 2005 4:02 PM said:


The simplest way to solve this problem is as follows:

- Have your Customer class hold only attributes for a customer. This
class would only have getter and setter methods. In the Java world,
this is referred to as a JavaBean. - Then, have a DAO class that does your data access functions.

Here is a sample DAO class:

[snip]

Ahh.. I guess this is the same thing that Michael Sims suggested?


class CustomerDAO {


function getCustomer(..) {
...
//return a customer
}


So I return a Customer object that has the set and get methods? And does
that mean I do the following?

->set_first_name()
->set_last_name()
->set_address_1()
->set_address_2()
->set_address_3()
->set_city()
->set_state()

me, I have 'data object' that are subclasses of a 'peer' object, the
'peer' class has all the methods for data handling e.g.

Persistent::submit() (update and insert are handled/determined internally)
Persistent::get()
Persistent::find()
Persistent::findRange()
etc..

the 'data object's have definitions that stipulate 'field'  objects
for each field in the database (usually a 1 to 1 relationship but not
always - for instance there is a VectorField for 1 to many stuff, and an
AssocField for many to many stuff).

if I have a Customer class I can do something _like_:

$cust = Persistent::get('Customer', array('CONTACT_ID' => $id));
$cust->firstname = 'Bob';
$cust->lastname = 'Builder';
$cust->submit();

the 'peer' class has __get() and __set() methods that find the requested
'field' object and return or set its value e.g. (very simplified)

class Persistent
{
        function __get($name)
        {
                if (isset($this->fields[$name])) {
                        return $this->fields[$name]->getValue();
                }

                throw new Exception("field '$name' does not exist in this 
(".get_class($this).") object!");
        }
}

maybe that gives you an idea about how to avoid constantly writing practically
the same getter/setter methods over and over... and also how to avoid
writing practically identical collection getter functions/methods
(how much different will you getCustomers() method be from your getProducts()
method ... in general anyway ... there are always exceptions to the rule! :)

etc.

Or is there a better way to handle it?


function getCustomers(..) {
...
// return a collection of customers
}


How do I return a collection of customers?



Thanks,
Chris.


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