[Resolved] Classes

[Sharif]

Hello,

Can someone please tell me what [man]Classes[/man] are used for? I see them used in forum scripts and stuff but I don't understand how they are to be used.

[weekender]

classes are a part of Object Oriented Programming - OOP, which is an alternative way of looking at data and functions.

say you have a book on your shelf. That book is an object - it has variables (an author, number of pages, etc) and methods (read, open, turn page etc).

In the same way, you can treat program data like this. A shopping cart is an object in the same way as a basket or a trolley in your local supermarket. It contains items that you are going to buy, and you can add and remove items from the cart (add and remove are methods).

hope that helps

adam

[tomwerner]

Until I few days ago I was in the same situation as you, however after looking at :
http://www.liquidpulse.net/articles/125
things became a lot clearer.

Classes are basically PHP's implementation of Object Orientated Programming. OOP is a concept where parts of the program are treated as objects, more than one object can be created with all of its variables and functions be independant of eachother. They also allow a user to use them without needing to know the internal workings of the script.

[ahundiak]

Here is an article from phpbuilder:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/rod19990601.php3
What is really instructive are the reader comments. There are a few more articles on the site as well.

The first chapter in this free book is a good introduction to objects:
http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/

[Sharif]

Thanks for all the links and help guys.

[weekender]

no probs. don't forget to mark thread resolved using the link below

adam

[Sharif]

I forgot to ask, but is object oriented programming (OOP) better than regular programming?