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:anasmughal@xxxxxxxxx>
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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