Re: Best Coding Practice


Anyways, this is also more of an opinion based question than one
seeking a definite answer. Recently, while maintaining a rather large
system. I needed to add an array class member to an object. It was
exactly the same as another class member, except that one array stored
regular products, and the other stored free promotional products. As
such, I needed a way to add products to the new, free array. Since all
the logic was the same between the two arrays aside from the price, I
had a few different options to do this. I'm interested in polling
which way some of the group members feel would have been the best.
Naturally these are abbreviated versions of what I envisioned as
possible solutions.
#2. (These next two are arranged as such, because the class using
these functions is included in many script files,
all of which I may not be aware of, so there would have to be some
default value for the array that was always used
before this new array was needed)
public function addArray($object, $free = NULL){
//logic
if(!$free){
$a[] = $object;
}else{
$b[] = $object;
}

}

not very good practice. when you start using conditional statements
within your code, it's a good canidate for refactoring. Seeing this
as a possibility, I probably would have created a abstract base
Products class, which it's child concrete classes would act as
containers for product items. The base class would contain all the
core functionality, and the child classes the specific elements.
Then, come time to add a new sibling class, it simply inherets from
the superclass and your good to go.




Frankly, I can't believe that I didn't think of a more OO approach to
begin with. I've been working in a shop that went through a series of
really terrible programmers, and me, wanting to stick to convention
just for consistency's sake, it appears I have begun to lose some of
my 'good' habits. I will have to consult this group more frequently to
ensure that doesn't happen any further. In fact, this code is so fresh
I may still go back and rewrite it.

That being the case, I have some more specific inquires into the
group's and ElINT's opinion on OOP. It's possible I'm not fully
understanding the way you describe it, ELINT, so if I'm reiterating
what you've already said, I apologize in advance. The approach I might
take, is as follows:
My Product class which is a member of the Order class, of which I
mentioned in my OP, would be my parent class. My reasoning for this is
because the Product class is already used in so many other scripts, I
wouldn't feel entirely comfortable suddenly making it a child class of
some other super class. Additionally, the data used to instantiate the
Product class is being pulled from a separate database table (like an
active record) however, the free products essentially are the items
from the Product table, only with their price overridden to $0 (that
in itself may not make a lot of sense, but apparently, after
communicating with the client its the best way to interface with their
inventory system). Therefore, in my mind it would make sense from an
OO standpoint to make a FreeProduct class which extends the Product
class and simply overrides the price member, or the function that
returns it.
Further thoughts and opinions on this matter are welcome and
appreciated.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Best Coding Practice
    ... I needed to add an array class member to an object. ... OO standpoint to make a FreeProduct class which extends the Product ... Cost is an attribute, and different values for attributes should not determine new products. ...
    (comp.lang.php)
  • calloc problem
    ... I am trying to dynamically allocate memory to be used as an array. ... The array is pointed to by the 'vert' member of the structure 'grid'. ... I wish for this array to be a 2 dimensional array of the struct ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: Best Coding Practice
    ... I needed to add an array class member to an object. ... wouldn't feel entirely comfortable suddenly making it a child class of ... OO standpoint to make a FreeProduct class which extends the Product ...
    (comp.lang.php)
  • Re: Best Coding Practice
    ... I needed to add an array class member to an object. ... wouldn't feel entirely comfortable suddenly making it a child class of ... Product with a cost of 0. ...
    (comp.lang.php)
  • Re: Numerical Python question
    ... >> Assume an array in Numerical Python, the contents of which are the ... >> entire array calculating the 10 day average of daily high price or the ... This works because, when you add ten slices offset by one, the result ...
    (comp.lang.python)