Re: Speaking of OOP

It isn't inherently obvious to us old-timers who grew up doing everything in a procedural manner. The main thing a class gives you is encapsulation. Meaning, you can group a bunch of simple functions together along with a set of variables. You can almost think of it as a data structure with user-definable transformation functions. For example: class wallet { var $total; function wallet($initial_amount) { $this->total = $initial_amount; } function add($amount) { $this->total += $amount; } function display() { echo '$'.number_format($this->total,2); } } This wallet class has one variable (known as a property) and 3 functions (known as methods). You can then do: $w1 = new wallet(10); $w2 = new wallet(20); This creates 2 wallet objects. The first starts off with $10 in it and the second starts with $20. To add money to the first wallet: $w1->add(5); And to display the current amount in the first wallet: $w1->display(); There is nothing here you couldn't do using straight procedural code, but from a code organization point of view some will say that this is cleaner. -Rasmus On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, John Guynn wrote: > I am a hardware guy hacking my way through building dynamic web pages using > PHP and MySQL and I just can't get the concept of OOP. I don't understand > what a class can offer that I can't do with a function. I've tried to read > a couple of books about OOP and a chapter about classes and such in a PHP > book and I just can't grasp the concept. > > Can someone explain to me how a class makes my life easier compared to using > functions. > > Thanks in advance, > > John Guynn > > This email brought to you by RFCs 821 and 1225. > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net >