Anyone have a working example of the Pear Primer By Joe Stump

nelg

Hi,

I am looking at the Pear Primer by Joe Stump (article on phpbuilder), and having trouble getting it working correctly. The problems I am running into are with the error logging systems. It appears to log errors using two methods, PEAR_Error and Log::factory.

I am using PHP 4.3, using the default pear libraries, and have been running into problems with errors not registering in syslog, and not being reflected upwards thru the classes. An example of this is, changing the DSN in the Base.php class should report upwards.. however, from what I can understand, User.php, calls the base function with

function User($userID = 0)
{
$this->Base();

This does not seem to capture any connection errors, so the User function blindly continues to run, causing other errors.

I've tried using code like this, which catches the error.
function User($userID = 0)
{
if (!$this->Base()) {
return false;
}

and modified the Base class to return false if it could not connect, like this:
$this->db =& DB::connect(BASE_PEAR_DSN,true);
if(DB::isError($this->db))
{
$this = new PEAR_Error($this->db->getMessage());
return false;
}

I am fairly new to pear, so would like to know if there is a better way, using PEAR_Error. Attached is the full source I am working with. Idea's anyone of the best way to do this stuff?

ednark

i use pear for my database abstraction but have not extended it before, if you are looking for production stuff quick i suggest looking at the DB_DataObjects project there at pear... looks like it might do what you are trying to do without you trying to do it because they already did... im playing with it now and i like it for the current project im looking at

also i can't get your example to work since i don't know what your database looks like... mind posting up a structure dump...

also your stuff is straight off the primer... which is itself a small complete project... instead of trying to suck it all in..rewrite it step for step yourself, that way you can test all the error catching one thing at a time

nelg

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah, I know it's straight off the primer (copy and paste most of it) I am simply interested in seeing the example code in the primer actually work as it was intended. I am not using this code for any real task, rather looking at is, since I wanted to learn about a bit more complex oo stuff than I usually need.

The database structor simple had a table with some records in it, unluding staffid and name. probally easier for you to change the SQL to any table you've got hanging around to test it.. that's what I did. I'll be able to get a structure tomorrow if you really need it to get it running.

I have been having trouble with the error logging, etc.

Thanks for your info with DB_DataObjects, was planning on having a look at it as well. I am just checking out some new stuff in php, as I've been using it for years, but never really got into pear stuff before.

As you said, I thought the code in the article should be a complete project, and that's basically what I was trying to get running..

ednark

as far as i can tell from the article, its not a very good article... not very descriptive...

basically the whole error thing:

pear has an object oriented error standard... instead of returning what you would normally, you can return a PEAR_Error object instead... this is a dirty trick that only pear uses... dynamically wwitching object types on the fly.. which is what the

$this = new PEAR_Error()

stuff is all about, and why you must use ::isError($obj) on things, to see if their type is error or not

the Log object thing is loosely based around the PEAR DB object thingy, and really just takes all the common actions associated with logging to different places, and hides them from you so you just need to ask and it does the dirty work...

punchline:

if you want to brush up on objects in php, don't look at pear ever, it uses dirty trick that only work in php and don't make a lot of sense,

if you want to learn pear look carefully over the source code to the DB object, as that is where pear came from... it will give you the best idea of what it's all about where it came from and where they will go with it