PHP OOP.... Why?

PHPbug

I am sure there is a good reason to use OOP in PHP, but I dont really see it..

I need someone to give an example of WHY to use OOP in PHP, I know HOW, but I just dont see the point...

Can someone give me an example to use it, and not point me to an article here, as I have read almost all OOP articles..

Thanks,
Chris

nashirak

I think the question (or a better question), Why use OOP at all? OOP has overhead associated with it and can sometimes be bloated when it comes to a very simple task. So why use it at all? Let me preface by saying, if you want to run extremely fast backend code you shouldnt be using OO, and secondly should be using a very low language such as C rather than PHP.

But for your everyday run of the mill stuff, why use OOP? OOP is more extensible for one. Lets say you have a database, and want to create a database object. So you instantiate a object like
$db = new Database(); or something of this sort. Now lets say, we switch from MYSQL to Postgresql. Well if we werent using OOP (true you could just make functions and then change the code behind them but we will ignore that for a second) we would have to rewrite all the code for each page we had a database call on.

Secondly, you can inherit. Lets say you make a Database Object, but are running 2 databases (or something of the sort), lets say they both have the same data in them (passords, tables, that is in the object Database) well if we want to make it so that both databases share the same data we just create to subclasses that inherit the parents data. etc.

These are just 2 reasons I can think of off the top of my head, I am shure there are others.

When you work on small projects or small individual scripts, this can all seem pretty pointless. But if you work on large to medium size projects, and want to write highly extensible, highly modifiable, highly adatable code, OOP is usually the way to go. Unless you want to try Genetic PHP :-D .

http://www2.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~jacob/Evolvica/GP/Java/html/

Hope this helps!

planetsim

A good OOP Tutorial is on the this site.

To extend that as well..

OOP is useful for somethings and not for others

Say you wanted just the date to be called..

easy

date("Y-m-d");

Now you wouldnt use OOP to do that when 1line is all you need. Unless you want more from that date.

Lets say we have a Members Area. And they are given the chance to have the date display the way they want.

Now you can just have a huge Function. That has the variable there. Yea it will be faster but what happens if things change or something is needed to be deleted or something. Going through a function will be hard to find the exact code to be deleted.

In a Class(OOP) function names can searlize whats in the function. Say i wanted to delete the function add.

In OOP i just delete that.

If i have 1 function for add/delete/edit id have a lot to change.

Now there not the greatest examples.

The thing i find best about OOP is its portability.
An Example is a News Script. Now most sites if not all sites on the web(That use PHP in our case) have some kinda News Script.

Now instead of having to rewrite the Add Then delete and finally change the Edit Function. We can pretty much without much change if not any just copy paste it over. and your done.

Now when you read the Article on OOP in this site. It has a better example then what i have shown.

ednark

OOP was invented for your sake... not the propcessors...

if you never feel frustrated with just using functional programming.. then don't bother with OOP, it is not a magic lamp....

if, however, you think... hmmm there has got to be a better way of organizing this.. then maybe you should look into OOP

one way is not better... its a trade off between efficiency and readability/typeability