Classes/OOP and superglobals

jonno946

Hi there,

Just wondering what everyones prefrences are with classes and user inputted data through the superglobals arrays.

So do you people prefer to:

a. call variables direct from the superglobals arrays from within classes

b. pass them as an function parameter?

The reason i ask is, for example, calling directly from say, the $_POST array within an object doesnt seem to appear very re-usable to me?

Also, for example, if i have one member function that registers a user by inputtin data into a database. If i then want to reuse the same class in another project, i'd have to change large chunks of the class around in order to add additional fields? Again, this doesnt seem very reusable.

So, i'm intrested to see how you guys incorporate the superglobals arrays into your script!

Thanks!

Drakla

I've got sick of having to verify user input all the time, I think it takes ages compared to how rubbish a task it is. Now I do everything with an input handling class. You pass the class arrays of names, sometimes with extra bits - so in my class I would have passed $_POST over into the $data property, then I do things like this inside

	// sign up number ranges must be between these values

$reqRanges = array (
	'title'				=> array(1, 5),
	'dobday'		=> array(1, 31),
	'dobmonth'	=> array(1, 12),
	'dobyear'		=> array(1900, date('Y') - 18)
);

$handler->set_ranges($reqRanges);


// then inside the class one section does: 
foreach ($this->reqNumRange as $key => $ranges)
		{	if (!isset($this->data[$key]) || !is_numeric($this->data[$key]) || 
					$this->data[$key] < $ranges[0] || $this->data[$key] > $ranges[1])
			{
				$this->errors[] = 'field "' . $key . '" not within range ' . $ranges[0] . ' to ' . $ranges[1];
				$errCnt++;
				$this->errorTypes[$key] = RH_ERROR_RANGE;
			}
		}

The tabs are all over the shop in that, but you see what I mean.

It also matches patterns, if things are numeric, etc. All the stuff I hate.

Shrike

Your two questions are related in a way. $POST is $POST regardless of whether you are writing procedural code or a class so you might as well use it. The data contained in $_POST is different depending on what you are doing so your objects will be different on each project regardless - you will always have to write new handlers for parsing and storing the data. In that sense the code is never going to be reusable.

What you can do is isolate the common parts (reading from $_POST, setting up the handlers, setting up the logic flow etc) and put that in an abstract class, and then write smaller concrete classes to handle each different situation.

Besides, when we talk about reusable code it is not generally from project to project (although frameworks like Prado are set up for this). It is more to do with how elements of code can be reused in the same project.