Class or Array

ethought

I was just wondering whether or not expert PHP developers are embracing OOP and utalizing classes in PHP or if you still find arrays a lot easier to work with.

To me (I am a Java developer) it still seems easier in PHP to just use arrays to hold data vs classes.

I like the idea of creating classes in PHP but not to just store information. For example, after logging a user into a website, there are 2 options.

Create a user class with getters and setters for all the user info. Then serialize the user object and store that in the session, unserializing when retrieving.
Put the user data in an array and store than in the session. No manual serialization/unserialization needed.

All this class is doing is storing information. No functions for business logic or anything. So what is your opinion?

devinemke

in my view, there is no real reason to use OOP just to store data. data is ultimatelly stored in variables (be they strings, arrays, integers, etc...) and why incur the overhead of a class/object instance just to store something as an object member.

bubblocity

I use OOP in PHP strictly to organize code, I can't even apply the term encapsulation properly, since the data isn't hidden. But it still gives me a way to keep the member variables and methods together and group them as objects.

I don't bother with the getter and setter methods and just make all the member variables public. But then when I write the methods for the objects, I don't have to worry about passing around large number of variables, I just set them member variables as I need, and then call the methods. I think it kind of helps with readability, and organization.

Yes, I do know how this must make a lot of OO developers cringe...