PHP OOP implementation idea

Question

I am looking to just get an understanding on how you guys would implement the following.

I think I have a reasonable understanding of OOP. If I have a website and a user account can be created for this website. I understand that I can create a user class that will handle the creation of this user by passing the relevant information through to the class.

If I have to make a CuRL post to pass some information through to a third party. would it make sense to create a CuRL class for this process that the user class can instantiate, also allowing for another class to post data through as well rather than creating a static function in global space or a curl function within each class that requires this function?

Another issue I have with my understanding of OOP, is if I have many similar functions that help to perform what is required. I will tend to bunch these all into one class (utils class?). This could range from passing in an array of data to output as a select element to passing user entered data through to validate and sanitize as required and return.

I think I am just looking for clarity on what is a good implementation of code with regard to OOP. Is it OK to have floating/static functions in global space working along side classes (Can that still be considered as OOP) or should everything I code be grouped as an object within a class that it would best fit?

I hope that makes sense?

Thanks

Answer 1

The concept behind OOP is to structure and divide responsibilities among various classes.

Models

There are various building stones, that are normally used when you consider different aspects of your application. For instance, a User class would often be considered a Model and be tied into an ORM.

The responsibility of a Model is to map the data stored in a database to the data stored in memory by PHP (or any other language). In many cases Models can also instantiate and register themselves in the database. Which is what you're looking for. Laravel's Eloquent ORM is a good example of an ORM which supports this.

cURL helper

Depending on your own opinion and the exact use case, both of your suggestions may be useful. I myself try to divide the responsibilities of each class as much as possible, this is to reach the purpose of a divided responsibility.

So I would create a helper class which can handle communication through cURL, which you can then call from various classes. I would even take if to a further level and create a Transport interface which cURL can implement. This would allow me to easily swap cURL with another transport layer, without having to change all the objects which depends on cURL.

Concept example:

<?php

interface Transport {
    const POST = 'post';
    public static postRequest($url, $data);
    protected static processRequest($method, $url, $data);
}

class cURL implements Transport
{
    public static postRequest($url, $data) {
        return self::processRequest(self::POST, $url, $data);
    }
    protected static processRequest($method, $url, $data) {
        // Implement method
    }
}

This cURL example ties well together with your third question. These are often called helper functions or helper methods. Depending on the code design your choose or the design of the framework you use, the way helper methods are called can vary.

I use Laravel which provides static methods. You can see some examples for the Hash and Auth helpers here.

OOP is not Functional programming

Global function is not a part of OOP. But there's no one to tell you whether this is good or bad practice, that is up to yourself to decide, whether this approach will work the best for your use case. Obviously it requires a certain amount of experience to consider all aspects of the chosen design patterns, but experience comes with time.

To use Laravel as an example again, they do provide some global functions that adhere to old fashioned PHP functional programming style. But the framework is mainly OO.

My suggestion to you

It sounds like you need a boilerplate for what you intend to build. I would suggest that you consider a framework to use, since frameworks will often answer the questions you're asked here. Both in terms of conventions and object responsibilities.

You could check this article for suggestions on PHP frameworks to use.