[RESOLVED] Combining Objects Implementation Question

linchat

Hi all,

I was wandering how some of you may implement combining unique objects that ultimately for one.

I have three objects

Company
Categories
Product

Each of these objects are standalone objects, but at times, the three could be combined to create a complete product.

One way is:

categories extends company
product extends categories

THis will work, but this extended object just seems like over and it is not something I need. I wish something in php would allow me to creare a parent like this

class productComplete extends product, categories, company {}

class product_complete
{
$obj1 = new product
$obj2 = new company
$obj3 = new categories
}

Another way?

Any ideas on implementation? THanks in advance.

laserlight

PHP does not support multiple inheritance. Anyway, multiple inheritance does not look like the correct solution here. You probably want normal inheritance with association.

From what I see, a complete product belongs to a company, is in a category, and is a product. Consequently, product_complete would inherit from product, and also maintain references to the relevant company and category objects that it is associated with.

An example:

class CompleteProduct extends Product
{
    private $company;
    private $category;

public function __construct(Company $company, Category $category)
{
    $this->company = $company;
    $this->category = $category;
}
}

linchat

Thanks for the reply:

Something like this

productComplate extends product
{
$objCompany;
$objCategories;

__construct($pid)
{
$this->getProduct($pid);
$objCompany->getCompany($this->compId);
$objCategory->getCategory($this->categoryId);
}
}

Object product which is pulled from a DB has fields for category and company Id's. So product would supply that information.

linchat

Geeze, sorry, I did not see the code you supplied when I replied to this. THanks for taking the time. Appreciate it much.

laserlight

Object product which is pulled from a DB has fields for category and company Id's. So product would supply that information.

Since companies and categories exist independently of their products, you only want association, not composition. As such, you would create the company and category objects, and then pass their references to the complete product object. Of course, you could use the fact that the complete product object, being a product object, has knowledge of the ids of its company and category, and from there determine which references to assign.

Geeze, sorry, I did not see the code you supplied when I replied to this. THanks for taking the time. Appreciate it much.

You're welcome 🙂
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