I'm too obsessed with OO, is it good or bad?!

Bijan

Hi, I feel that I'm going crazy. I'm trying to write everything as a class and I don't care for simplicity! I know that it's bad, but it seems that I hate functions and I can't work with them anymore! You know, I think we can not do much things with classes in a php script, coz the glue part of the program (the part that should take the $_POST vars and do the header stuff and ...) makes a great part of the whole script, but I'm still trying to write as OO as possible.

For example for a simple image upload program, that needs to get an image and a description from the client and put it in a db, I wrote 2 classes, that one of them inherits from the another. Here are my 2 classes:

class status_admin_utils
{
	$returned_messages = array(
								  "method_1" => array(
														"success" => array(),
														"failure" => array()
													),
								  "method_2" => array(
														"success" => array(),
														"failure" => array()
													)
									.
									.
									. 
									.
	function status_admin_utils( $some_arguments )
	{
		# Some assignments
	}

function read_db()
{
	# reads the db

	# put all the success/failure messages inside the $returned_messages["read_db"] array,
	# that I can output output to the user (if I want) after running the method
}

function write_db()
{
	# write into db

	# put all the success/failure messages inside the $returned_messages["write_db"] array,
	# that I can output to the user (if I want) after running the method
}

function manage_uploaded_images( $images, $descriptions, $dir_to_upload )
{
	# copy the images into $dir_to_upload and then write their address/description 
	# into the db.

	# put all the success/failure messages inside the $returned_messages["manage_uploaded_images"] array,
	# that I can output to the user (if I want) after running the method
}

function delete_records( $records_ids )
{
	# Perform the same thing, and puts the relative messages in $returned_messages array.
}

}

Ok, you might say that it's ok till now, but the problem is that I need to show the contents of the db to the users too. I t means that I have to write all the records to the browser and put a check box for each record. After the user checked some of the checkboxes and pressed the delete button for example, I have to get the id of those records ( that are the values of the checkboxes) and then delete them. So, I'm trying to do this with classes! I mean I show the contents of my db to the client by means of a class and I make all those checkboxes and their values by a class, then when the page is loaded, I check if $_POST vars is full, if yes, it means I should parse it and call the appropriate method. How do I do that? See:

class status_admin_manage extends status_admin_utils
{
	function status_admin_manage($tableName)
	{
		# This is the name of my database table.
		$this->tableName = $tableName;
	}

function show_selectable_records($action_page)
{
	?>
	<form action="<?=$action_page?>" method="POST">
		<input name="to_be_used_by" value="<?=$this->tableName?>">

		.
		.
		.
		.
		<input type="submit" name="to_be_used_for" value="delete"><br />
		<input type="submit" name="to_be_used_for" value="edit">
	</form>
	<?
}
}

So, now in the action page (where my form sends its data, it might be the current page too), I check for $POST["to_be_used_by"], if it has the name of my database table, I instantiate an object of the previous class, then I check for $POST["to_be_used_for"], so, for example if it is "delete", I call the delete_records method of my class. Writing like this, allows me to have multiple classes in one page, and I can always call the right class->method. So, what is your idea? Is it good or bad? I'm almost doing everything inside of my class, and I think I reached a kind of style for myself! If I write all my classes like this, then I'll be able to work with them even if 100 years passes! I don't need to read the glue part of the program to find out what variable I should use or what method I should call!

Thanks for your comments,
bijan

shareaweb

I'll throw you a wrench here, and how you screw the bolt on is up to you...

PHP5 (<<--- thats the wrench)

offerring class and variable access modifiers so you can place your db record in a private scoped function and move the public ones to a protected scope which then can be accessed by a extended publically accessible class.

I would hold off on beating yourself up more than that, since it would be a whle lot easier... heres also some other upcoming features :

<?php

interface ELGTextEdit {
function replaceText();
function uC();//uppercase
function lC();//lowercase
}

class ELGText implements ELGTextEdit {
protected $text;

// Method declarations
// First the constructor
function __contruct() {
$this->text = "ERIC IS COOL!";
}

function display(){
return $this->text;
}

function replaceText($s){
$this->text = $s;
}

function uC(){
$this->text = strToUpper($this->text)."<br>";
}

function lC(){
$this->text = strToLower($this->text)."<br>";
}
}
class MissingArgumentException
{
function __construct($e)
{
$this->e = $e;
}

function toString()
{
    return 'A MissingArgumentException occurred : ' . $this->e;
}

}
$elg = new ELGText();
$elg->replaceText("YOUR COOL");
$elg->lC();
echo $elg->display();
$elg->uC();
echo $elg->display();
try{
throw new MissingArgumentException("<br>You must specify the text to replace");
} catch (MissingArgumentException $e){
echo $e->toString();
}

So you could handle your db exceptions internally too, now thats cool.

for more, wait for my article to come out at developer.com 😉

Bijan

I'm waiting! Well, I actually found out that my design pattern was totally wrong, and I'm basically using a big function instead of several objects! What I'm currently working on, is finding a site with FREE ebooks about designing patterns (specially with classes). You know, it took me 1 day to write a normal script for adding some names to the database! I wrote it with classes, but if I did it normally (just normal functions) I could have done it in 30 minutes! So, I think I should work more! Any cool site or article or whatever?!