Jason Barnett wrote: > Think of declaration of properties and methods as a "contract". When > something is public it is available to all of PHP. When it is private > it is only usable by the class that you define it in. When it is > protected it is a hybrid; it is usable to the class that defined it and > it can be "inherited" by classes that extend that class. > > So, decide what level of access you really *need* for that property / > method. If a property is only supposed to be modified by class methods > (for example, a password string) then make it private or possibly > protected. If everything is public access then there is temptation to > do something like: Back in the day, I used to code in C++ Nothing irked me more than some so-called programmer who would over-zealously make every damned thing private. I'd go and sub-class it, and want to make my extended class actually USEFUL and be ham-strung by his short-sightedness. So when you ask yourself "Self, should this be public, protected, or private?" make sure you phrase it as: "Can I think of ANY way in the future that some other cool programmer would want to do fun and interesting and useful things with this?" Let the flames begin :-) -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
