Re: Class Properties in Interfaces?

On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 23:51 -0400, Nathan Nobbe wrote: > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Robert Cummings <robert@interjinn.com> > wrote: > > > > > That should be a matter of choice for the developer. When you say > "but > > when, down the road, some logic...", all I see is you waving your > hands > > in the air and presuming that the logic will change. The logic may > not > > change, in which case why am I incurring the cost of getter/setter > > methods. "If" the logic changes, I'll be happy to add getter and > setter > > methods at that time and punt the needed functionality into the > magic > > methods which will call the appropriate getter or setter method. You > are > > preparing for a future that may not come, I am willing to > retroactively > > handle that future "if" it arrives. Neither approach strikes me as > being > > more correct but rather they each presume an educated guess on the > > likelihood of the property changing it's semantics down the road. > > > the developer does have a choice. to use an interface, or an abstract > class. data facilitates methods accomplishing what it is they > purport. > quite frankly, i have never written an interface with getters and / or > setters anyway, nor do i see the need to. i would consider it silly. > interfaces are typically used to say, any class that makes this happen > will > likely do it in a way differently than all the others. since, getters > and > setters are almost always implemented the exact same way i find these > topics > to be rather different. if there is in fact a standard way of doing > things > for any given interface, then to realize it, a common implementor > class can > be composed, and delegated to by classes that implement said interface > in > the 'standard' way. Abstract classes and interfaces are not the same. They are used for fundamentally different reasons. An interface is to enforce a contract for all implementations of the interface. Therefore if I were to create an interface with an interface property of x, then all implementations using that interface would know that property x exists and could use it thusly without having to check for it's existence. Using an abstract class is a hack, it's not sufficient for enforcement, and you can't combine multiple abstract classes as you can with interfaces. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP