On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 09:28:28AM +0100, phplist wrote:
> This relates to a minor dilemma I come across from time and time,
> and I'm looking for advice on pros and cons and best practice. Last
> night I encountered it again.
>
> Within a site I have a User object, and within page code would like to have
> if ($crntUser->isASubscriber) {...}
>
> There seems to be two ways to handle this:
>
> I can have a User object method "getSubscriberStatus()" which sets
> $this->isASubscriber. But to use this I would have to run the method
> just before the if statement.
>
> Or I could have a method "isASubscriber()" which returns the result,
> meaning the if statement should be
> if ($crntUser->isASubscriber()) {...}
>
> While this is last night's specific example, I seem to face the
> method-setting-variable or the method-returning-result-directly
> decision quite often.
>
> Is either of these approaches preferable, or does it simply not matter?
If I read you correctly, the latter would be preferable, primarily
because it involves one less step. But if you're going to have to make
that decision in an "if" statement repeatedly, I'd probably say:
$isSubscribed = $crntUser->isASubscriber();
just because in subsequent code, you're not suffering the (admittedly
small) repeated overhead of the function call.
But in answer to your question, isASubscriber() would be a pretty
standard "getter" method to expose internal object properties.
Paul
--
Paul M. Foster
http://noferblatz.com
http://quillandmouse.com
--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
