OOPs what about encapsulation

[achilles]

I'm making a decision as to wether I should take an object oriented approach or just build the damn thing with functions.

Ok php object's variables aren't encapsulated, how much of a hindrance have other people found this feature(I have nightmares about adding code to the app a year later when we've over 40,000 lines of code, accidentally using the wrong variable name and 'we all fall down') and what kinds of workaround have you found practically useful or have you found it better to just use functions.

What do you think is it better to use functions or PHP's incomplete implementation of OOP?

[Anon]

You won't run into problems like that, if I'm understanding you correctly. The data can't be 'hidden' or 'private' like it can in other languages, but you shouldn't run into any naming conflicts.

If you have a class called 'User' and some variables inside called:

$userID
$userName
$userEmail

You won't call them in your main app by $userID, etc. - you will call them with the name of the instantiated object like:

$myUser->userID

And really, it's convention not to access the variables directly, but rather use set and get methods which can perform error checking and whatnot on the data you're trying to insert.

[achilles]

Thanks in that case the decision is made