[RESOLVED] First class using OCI8

[kristo5747]

Hello!!

DISCLAIMER: I am self taught. There is a lot of OO programming concepts that I am not familiar with.

I have to build an app using Oracle OCI8 so I decided to create a utility class (my first one!). This class works even though it is very simple:

<?php
 /*
  * ++Very++ basic Oracle wrapper for PHP inspired by the work of
  * Tarmo Protsin <[e-mail]> at PHPClasses.org
  *
  * @author kristo5747
  */

class ociClass {
	/**
	 * Unsure if it matters but I am not using _ in the name of my variables.
	 */
    var $user;
    var $password;
    var $database;
    var $conn;
    var $stmt;
    var $res;
    var $err;

/**
 * Connects to database.
 * Returns TRUE if connection succeeded, FALSE otherwise.
 * @return boolean
 */
function connect()
{
    $this->conn = oci_connect($this->user, $this->password, $this->database);

    if (!$this->conn)    {
        $this->err = oci_error();
        echo "Code: " . $this->err["code"] . "\n";
        echo "Message: " . $this->err["message"] . "\n";
        echo "Position: " . $this->err["offset"] . "\n";
        return FALSE;
    }
    return TRUE;
}

/**
 * Executes given query.
 * Returns TRUE if query executed successfully, FALSE otherwise.
 * @return boolean
 */
function query($sql)
{
    $this->stmt = oci_parse($this->conn, $sql);
    $this->res = oci_execute($this->stmt);

    if (!$this->res)        {
        $this->err = oci_error($this->stmt);
        echo "Code: " . $this->err["code"] . "\n";
        echo "Message: " . $this->err["message"] . "\n";
        echo "Position: " . $this->err["offset"] . "\n";
        return FALSE;
    }
    return TRUE;
}

function disconnect()
{
    oci_close($this->conn);
    return TRUE;
}
}
?>

And this is the page I am calling my class from:

<?php

include "ociClass.php";

$orcl = new ociClass();

$orcl->user = "user";
$orcl->password = "password";
$orcl->database = "//Host_Name:Port_Number/SID";

// Check if connection failed.
// If failed (retcode=FALSE) then print out the error and abort script execution.
if (!$orcl->connect())
{
	echo "Error: Could not connect to database!\n";
	die();
}

$sql = "SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM TABS";

// Check if query failed.
// If failed (retcode=FALSE) then print out the error and abort script execution.
if (!$orcl->query($sql))
{
	echo "Error: Could not get data from database!\n";
	die();
}

while ($row = oci_fetch_array($orcl->stmt, OCI_ASSOC+OCI_RETURN_NULLS)) {
    //Oracle returns all field names in upper case so field names MUST BE in uppercase
    // otherwise PHP returns `undefined index` error;
    $id = $row['TABLE_NAME'];
    echo $id. "\n";
}

$orcl->disconnect();
?>

As you can see, all of it is very basic. How can it be improved? Ideally, I would like to create two additional functions :

B error management [/B]; there is a challenge since oci_connect errors require no handle but oci_execute do. Is overloading the right approach?
B query result management [/B]; instead of naming the fields of the query, I would rather make a method that uses something like an array....

Thanks in advance,

Al.

[NogDog]

A few unsorted thoughts:

1. I would not have the DB class directly output error messages. Output to the browser or other client should be determined by the main script, not a "utility" class. I would just have the class write errors to the error log ([man]error_log()[/man]) and save the error to the class $err variable for the client code to access if it wants to.

2. If the intent of the object is to represent a single database connection, I might consider using a constructor method that accepts the connection parameters. If desired, you could even have the constructor call the connect() method itself rather than requiring the client code to explicitly call it (since presumably you aren't going to create the object without having it connect to the D😎.

3. Are you using PHP 5? (If not, why not?) Assuming you are, you might want to look into setting visibility for the class variables and methods, as well as the number of other features available.

[kristo5747]

Thanks for your reply. Your input is much appreciated.