[TYPO3-50-general] Helping Functions

[Xavier Perseguers]

Hi Nino,

> So, no matter if you restrict the access but provide a public access or 
> declare it public from the start. It's the same.
> 
> No excuses here.
> Maybe you change the getter method in near future but that's NOT an 
> excuse for providing it right NOW.
> Code like this is, beside the validation of essential OOP principles, 
> clear YAGNI. And leads to orphaned methods later when you decide to 
> provide a "real" and good interface.
> So first provide that clean interface to a class with some meaningful 
> behaviours and you won't have to write those getters/setters anymore.

I may write my class

class person {
    public $email;
}

and then later on change to virtual properties as you said to validate 
the email :

class person {
    private $_email;
    // some magic stuff for virtual properties

    public setEmail($email) {
       if (preg_match('/blabla/', $email)) $this->_email = $email;
    }
}

and my code would still work:

before:
$foo->email = 'somebody at domain.tld';
echo $foo->email;

after:
$foo->email = 'somebody at domain.tld';
echo $foo->email;

thanks to the virtual properties that now use the setter I defined (and 
the getter if I managed to write a special getEmail() method)

Now if FLOW3 does not provide virtual properties, you seem to say that 
your coding style is to first write

class person {
    public $email;
}

and associated code

$foo->email = 'somebody at domain.tld';
echo $foo->email;

and later on when you write

class person {
    private $_email;

    public setEmail($email) {
       if (preg_match('/blabla/', $email)) $this->_email = $email;
    }

    public getEmail() {
       return $this->_email;
    }
}

you will refactor your code and change this to

$foo->setEmail('somebody at domain.tld');
echo $foo->getEmail();

???

Personally, when I know that a bit later on I will validate email, I 
would write from the beginning the getter and setter with no validation 
code and latter on simply add the validation without having to refactor 
anything.

I really enjoy refactoring but not for such stuff. Interfaces are there 
in order to let you change the code without having to refactor anything. 
My example is just a step before writing an interface but anyway, I 
think it does not make sense doing refactoring for the love of refactoring.

-- 
Xavier Perseguers
http://xavier.perseguers.ch/en/tutorials/typo3.html