NYCPHP Meetup

[Rob Marscher]

A lot of the methods in the Zend Framework classes use object chaining.  
It requires PHP5.  In terms of the prototype concept... javascript 
doesn't have a traditional object implementation -- you can't say "class 
A extends class B" -- and the lines are pretty blurred between what a 
function is and what an object is, so that why you kind of have to hack 
it via the prototype object to achieve some sense of object-oriented 
javascript. 

Here's the idea of object chaining in php:
class SomeClass
{
  function doSomething()
  {
    echo "Something\n";
    return $this;
  }
  function getOther()
  {
    if (!isset($this->other))
    {
       $this->other = new OtherClass();
    }
     return $this->other;
  }
}
class OtherClass
{
  function doSomethingElse()
  {
    echo "Something Else\n";
    return $this;
  }
}
$foo = new SomeClass();
$foo->doSomething()->getOther()->doSomethingElse();

-Rob

csnyder wrote:
> On 1/22/07, Cliff Hirsch <cliff at pinestream.com> wrote:
>
>> I wonder how these techniques work in the PHP world. Does anyone use
>> chaining effectively? Is there a PHP equivalent to the prototype 
>> concept?
>
> Javascript is an beautiful, powerful language. I never thought I would
> say that, and I think Netscape could have done so much more "back in
> the day" to produce good documentation and examples. That's what
> Prototype, MochiKit, jQuery, et al are finally doing.
>
> Anyway, PHP's object support doesn't really compare. Classes are not
> the same as prototypes. And not everything in PHP is an object,
> therefore chaining is a kludge at best.
>
>> From the point of view of readability and maintainability, I hope
> developers *aren't* trying to replicate Javascript patterns in PHP...
>