Comments on: Mastering Object Oriented PHP

By: Brandon Savage

Brandon Savage — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:33:00 +0000

For years, PHP was largely a procedural language. Object orientation began with PHP 4, and improved in PHP 5. There are a number of reasons why OO PHP is better than procedural; I spend a good bit of time discussing that in my book. The short list is that it makes it easier to test, easier to swap in and out different components, and simpler to maintain.

While you may not share your code base now, I’d bet you that if you’re pursuing PHP professionally in the next five years you will share a code base with somebody. And that will make a huge impact in your thinking process.

As for “getters and setters”, PHP doesn’t require that you define them and doesn’t define them automatically. That’s purely a style thing and you can access object properties with $object->property as long as they are public.

By: KMB

KMB — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 07:32:37 +0000

Imho what OOP in PHP is lacking is a good reason to use it. At least for me. I understand the basics but I am missing one or two good arguments to use it (which would then obviously give me enough incentive to buy your book ;-).

Is it better performance-wise? What’s the advantage over procedural programming besides the “capsules”, which makes using duplicate function-names easier?

The last question could also be described as: On one side I have a nice little function with some arguments I can easily use in the rest of my code-base. On the other side I have to define classes/objects apply a bunch of “uninteresting” functions like setters and getters and suddenly my code-base has expanded manifold.

Please note, that I don’t have to share my code-base with anyone and I am the only one working on it, so there is seldom a need for “capsulating” code.