On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 16:20:20 +0100, Maxim Maletsky wrote:
I use PHP classes extensively and very often use classes
within other classes.
First off, I would make sure to take advantage of inheritence
as much as possible. I have heirarchies up to 4 deep for
some of my classes depending on how much specialization
I need while at the same time maintaining only one set
of code for functionality common to all subclasses.
As for using classes within classes, I don't include
the classes within a class definition nor within
a method def. I include the class def in the class
file but outside the actual class {} statement.
When I instantiate the class, if I will need the object
ref to pass to other classes or to other methods within
the calling class, I assign the initial object
instantiation to a class variable. That way any class
methods can have ready access to that class via the
ojbect reference stored in the class variable.
Only when I know for sure that the use of a class will
be for one purpose do I include and instantiate within
a method.
as always, YMMV depending on the structure of your project.
NOTE: There is a set of new PHP functions that allow
a sort of dynamic multiple inheritence. You can look
here for info:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.objaggregation.php
Jeff
@ Nilaab [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote... :
Hello everyone,
I want to be able to use objects to create my future pages. My goal is
to use methods of classes to make the original front-line script easier
to read, while all the processing is done with a simple call to the
different classes from a single class. Please read futher, as I'll get
to a point and to my question...
I have many classes that do different tasks, like formValidator.class,
stringManipulator.class, db.class, fileManipulation.class,
template.class, etc (these are self-explanitory as their names suggest).
Then, I might have a class called category.class that adds, deletes,
edits, moves, and renames categories within the filesystem and database.
But I would have a front-line script called category.php that would call
the necessary methods of category.class at certain points, depending on
the task being done on a specific step.
In other words I want category.class to call the other classes and do
something with them, then in turn I want category.php to call objects in
category.class for a specific task, such as:
?php
// category.php
include (category.class);
$cat = new category ();
$cat-addCategory($new_cat_name);
// or
$cat-editCategory($cat_name);
// or
$cat-deleteCategory($cat_name);
// or
$cat-moveCategory($cat_name);
// or
$cat-renameCategory($cat_name);
?
My question is:
How can I call a class within another class and do something with it?
Right now I'm doing it the most convenient way I know, which is
including other classes using the include() function within the methods
of the category.class. There is no multiple-inheritance allowed in PHP,
so I can only use inheritance on one class.
Including new classes within the existing classes is not such a bad idea
as it ensures you to have only the necessary classes called.
I am also extremely skeptical about creating too many classes at a time
in one script. Do the above examples degrade performance speed of the
script when I call too many classes? Also, isn't there a way to use
sessions to save created classes and then use them again for other
scripts without the need to make a new instance of the same class again
and again?
yes, you can serialize/unserialize classes into the sessions. This makes
it a little more complicated, but can be helpful sometimes.
I am really looking for a better way to organize my code while still
being able to use these classes whenever I need them and at the same
time keeping the category.php file clean and easy to read. Is there a
tutorial on how to organize code? I'm not looking for html template
tutorials. Just how to get around inheritance limits while still keeping
performance and clean-code in mind.
You know what I have once done? I created a file with functions that
return you the object pointers. It would create (declare) the class
whenever it was not declared before or just return the pointer from a
global variable if it was declared before. That way, you only load a few
functions, and whenever you need a class you assign a variable to the
function's return to have the class. This limits you script to only
classes you use and no includes within the script itself. A kind of silly
method, but can be easy to work with.
Also, check out the new Zend 2 engine, it has tons of improvements with
classes for PHP5. Currently the code is in CVS (checkout php5 module).
Changes are listed here:
http://cvs.php.net/co.php/ZendEngine2/ZEND_CHANGES
--
Maxim Maletsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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