Hi. I have an abstract base class (call it genericServiceHandler). I have concrete classes (FaxService, EmailService). The genericServiceHandler is watching for commands from an external source. The commands will always be one of a fixed set, no matter what the concrete service is. They are Pause, Continue, Start, Stop, Shutdown, PreShutdown. The genericServiceHandler has no need to process the commands. It only receives them and maybe dispatches them to the concrete class. The concrete class doesn't have to implement handlers for all of the commands, though, at a minimum, onStart() would be pretty much essential. My question relates to how should I code this. Should the base class have empty protected stubs to allowing the concrete class to override them via inheritance? Should I use __call() to capture the non-existing methods and use LSB to allow the concrete class to get the commands? I need to document this (phpdoc) to allow those designing the actual services know what to implement. The empty stubs certainly seems the easiest as I can block the scope to protected and include a full reasoning on when the method will be called (not all commands are applicable at all times). Using __call() can be documented using @method, but pretty much only a single line of description. What would you all do? Regards, Richard Quadling. -- Richard Quadling Twitter : EE : Zend @RQuadling : e-e.com/M_248814.html : bit.ly/9O8vFY -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
