Figure 1-1
This section introduces the primary concepts of object-oriented programming and explores how they interact. Chapter 3, "Putting Objects to Work," looks at the specifics of implementing them in PHP5. You'll learn about:
classes: the "blueprints" for an object and the actual code that defines the properties and methods
objects: running instances of a class that contain all the internal data and state information needed for your application to function
inheritance: the ability to define a class of one kind as being a subtype of a different kind of class (much the same way a square is a kind of rectangle)
polymorphism: allows a class to be defined as being a member of more than one category of classes (just as a car is "a thing with an engine" and "a thing with wheels")
interfaces: defines a contract specifying that an object is capable of implementing a method without actually defining how it is to be done
encapsulation: the ability of an object to protect access to its internal data
If any of these terms seem difficult to understand, don't worry. The material that follows will clarify everything. Your newfound knowledge may even completely change the way you approach your software development projects.
In the real world, objects have characteristics and behaviors. A car has a color, a weight, a manufacturer, and a gas tank of a certain volume. Those are its characteristics. A car can accelerate, stop, signal for a turn, and sound the horn. Those are its behaviors. Those characteristics and behaviors are common to all cars. Although different cars may have different colors, all cars have a color. Using a construct known as a class, OOP enables you to establish the idea of a car as being something with all those characteristics. A class is a unit of code, composed of variables and functions, which describes the characteristics and behaviors of all the members of a set. A class called Car would describe the properties and methods common to all cars.
In OO terminology, the characteristics of a class are known as its properties. Properties have a name and a value. Some allow their value to be changed; others do not. For example, in the Car class, you would probably have such properties as color and weight. Although the color of the car can be changed by giving it a new paint job, the weight of the car (without cargo or passengers) is a fixed value.
Some properties represent the state of the object. State refers to those characteristics that change because of certain events but are not necessarily directly modifiable on their own. In an application that simulates vehicle performance, the Car class might have a property called velocity. The velocity of the car is not a value that can be changed on its own, but rather is a byproduct of the amount of fuel being sent to the engine, the performance characteristics of that engine, and the terrain over which the car is traveling.
The behaviors of a class are known as its methods. Methods of classes are syntactically equivalent to functions found in traditional procedural code. Just like functions, methods can accept any number of parameters, each of any valid data type. Some methods act on external data passed to them as parameters, but they can also act on the properties of their object, either using those properties to inform actions made by the method such as when a method called accelerate examines the remaining amount of fuel to determine whether the car is capable of accelerating or to change the state of the object by modifying values such as the velocity of the car.
To begin with, you can think of a class as a blueprint for constructing an object. In much the same way that many houses can be built from the same blueprint, you can build multiple instances of an object from its class. But the blueprint doesn't specify details such as the color of the walls or type of flooring. It merely specifies that those things will exist. Classes work much the same way. The class specifies the behaviors and characteristics the object will have, but not necessarily the values of those characteristics. An object is a concrete entity constructed using the blueprint provided by a class. The idea of a house is analogous to a class. Your house (a specific instance of the idea of a house) is analogous to an object.
With a blueprint in hand and some building materials, you can construct a house. In OOP, you use the class to build an object, this process is known as instantiation. Instantiating an object requires two things:
A memory location into which to load the object. This is automatically handled for you by PHP.
The data that will populate the values of the properties. This data can come from a database, a flat text file, another object, or some other source.
A class can never have property values or state. Only objects can. You have to use the blueprint to build the house before you can give it wallpaper or vinyl siding. Similarly, you have to instantiate an object from the class before you can interact with its properties or invoke its methods. Classes are manipulated at design time when you make changes to the methods or properties. Objects are manipulated at runtime when values are assigned to their properties and their methods are invoked. The problem of when to use the word class and when to use the word object is something that often confuses those new to OOP.
After an object is instantiated, it can be put to work implementing the business requirements of the application. Let's look at exactly how to do that in PHP.
Start with a simple example. Save the following in a file called class.Demo.php:
<?php class Demo { } ?>
And there you have it the Demo class. Not terribly exciting just yet, but this is the basic syntax for declaring a new class in PHP. Use the keyword class to let PHP know you're about to define a new class. Follow that with the name of the class and braces to indicate the start and end of the code for that class.
| Note | It's important to have a clearly defined convention for organizing your source code files. A good rule to follow is to put each class into its own file and to name that file class.[ClassName].php. |
You can instantiate an object of type Demo like this:
<?php require_once('class.Demo.php'); $objDemo = new Demo(); ?>
To instantiate an object, first make sure that PHP knows where to find the class declaration by including the file containing your class (class.Demo.php in this example), then invoke the new operator and supply the name of the class and opening and closing parentheses. The return value of this statement is assigned to a new variable, $objDemo in this example. Now you can invoke the $objDemo, object's methods and examine or set the value of its properties if it actually has any.
Even though the class you've created doesn't do much of anything just yet, it's still a valid class definition.
The Demo class isn't particularly useful if it isn't able to do anything, so let's look at how you can create a method. Remember, a method of a class is basically just a function. By coding a function inside the braces of your class, you're adding a method to that class. Here's an example:
<?php class Demo { function sayHello($name) { print "Hello $name!"; } } ?> An object derived from your class is now capable of printing a greeting to anyone who invokes the sayHello method. To invoke the method on your $objDemo object, you need to use the operator -> to access the newly created function:
<?php require_once('class.Demo.php'); $objDemo = new Demo(); $objDemo->sayHello('Steve'); ?> The object is now capable of printing a friendly greeting. The -> operator is used to access all methods and properties of your objects.
| Note | For those who have had exposure to OOP in other programming languages, note that the -> operator is always used to access the methods and properties of an object. PHP does not use the dot operator (.) in its OO syntax at all. |
Adding a property to your class is just as easy as adding a method. You simply declare a variable inside the class to hold the value of the property. In procedural code, when you want to store some value, you assign that value to a variable. In OOP, when you want to store the value of a property, you also use a variable. This variable is declared at the top of the class declaration, inside the braces that bracket the class's code. The name of the variable is the name of the property. If the variable is called $color, you will have a property called color.
Open the class.Demo.php file and add the highlighted code:
<?php class Demo { public $name; function sayHello() { print "Hello $this->name!"; } } ?> This new variable, called $name, is all you have to do to create a property of the Demo class called name. To access this property, you use the same -> operator as that of the previous example, along with the name of the property. The rewritten sayHello method shows how to access the value of this property.
Create a new file called testdemo.php and add the following:
<?php require_once('class.Demo.php'); $objDemo = new Demo(); $objDemo->name = 'Steve'; $objAnotherDemo= new Demo(); $objAnotherDemo->name = 'Ed'; $objDemo->sayHello(); $objAnotherDemo->sayHello(); ?>
Save the file and then open it in your Web browser. The strings "Hello Steve!'' and "Hello Ed!'' print to the screen.
The keyword public is used to let the class know that you want to have access to the following variable from outside the class. Some member variables of the class exist only for use by the class itself and should not be accessible to external code. In this example, you want to be able to set and retrieve the value of the property name. Note that the way the sayHello method works has changed. Instead of taking a parameter, it now fetches the name value from the property.
You use the variable $this so that an object can get information about itself. You might have multiple objects of a class, for instance, and because you don't know in advance what the name of an object variable will be, the $this variable enables you to refer to the current instance.
In the previous example, the first call to sayHello prints "Steve" and the second call prints "Ed". This is because the $this variable allows each object to access its own properties and methods without having to know the name of the variable which represents it in the exterior application. Previously, we said that some properties influence the action of certain methods, such as the example in which the accelerate method of the Car class needs to examine the amount of fuel remaining. The code inside accelerate would use code such as $this->amountOfFuel to access this property.
| Note | When accessing properties, you need only one $. The syntax is $obj->property , not $obj->$property. This fact often causes confusion for those new to PHP. The property variable is declared as public $property and accessed using $obj->property. |
In addition to the variables that store the values for the properties of the class, other variables may be declared for use by the internal operations of the class. Both kinds of data are collectively referred to as the class's internal member variables. Some of these are accessible to code outside the class in the form of properties. Others are not accessible and are strictly for internal housekeeping. For example, if the Car class needed to get information from a database for whatever reason, it might keep a database connection handle in an internal member variable. This database connection handle is obviously not a property of the car, but rather is something the class needs to carry out certain operations.
As the previous example shows, you can set the value of the name property to just about anything you want including an object, an array of integers, a file handle, or any other nonsensical value. However, you don't get an opportunity to do any sort of data validation or update any other values when the name property is set.
To work around this problem, always implement your properties in the form of functions called get[property name] and set[property name]. Such functions are known as accessor methods, and are demonstrated in the following example.
Make the changes highlighted in the following to class.Demo.php:
<?php class Demo { private $_name; public function sayHello() { print "Hello {$this->getName()}!"; } public function getName() { return $this->_name; } public function setName($name) { if(!is_string($name) || strlen($name) == 0) { throw new Exception("Invalid name value"); } $this->_name = $name; } } ?> Edit testdemo.php as shown here:
<?php require_once('class.Demo.php'); $objDemo = new Demo(); $objDemo->setName('Steve'); $objDemo->sayHello(); $objDemo->setName(37); //would trigger an error ?> As you can see, the member access level of name has changed from public to private and has been prefixed with an underscore. The underscore is a recommended naming convention to indicate private member variables and functions; however, it is merely a convention PHP does not require it. The keyword private protects code outside the object from modifying this value. Private internal member variables are not accessible from outside the class. Because you can't access these variables directly, you're forced to use the getName() and setName() accessor methods to access this information, ensuring that your class can examine the value before allowing it to be set. In this example, an exception is thrown if an invalid value is supplied for the name property. Additionally, the public access specifier for the functions has been added. Public is the default visibility level for any member variables or functions that do not explicitly set one, but it is good practice to always explicitly state the visibility of all the members of the class.
A member variable or method can have three different levels of visibility: public, private, and protected. Public members are accessible to any and all code. Private members are accessible only to the class itself. These are typically items used for internal housekeeping and might include such things as a database connection handle or configuration information. Protected members are available to the class itself and to classes that inherit from it. (Inheritance is defined and discussed in detail later in this chapter.)
By creating accessor methods for all your properties, you make it much easier to add data validation, new business logic, or other changes to your objects in the future. Even if the current business requirements for your application involve no data validation of a given property, you should still implement that property with get and set functions so that you can add validation or business logic functionality in the future.
| Note | Always use accessor methods for your properties. Changes to business logic and data validation requirements in the future will be much easier to implement. |
For many of the classes you will create, you will need to do some special set-up when an object of that class is first instantiated. You might need to fetch some information from a database, or initialize some property values, for example. By creating a special method called a constructor, implemented in PHP using a function called __construct(), you can perform any activities required to instantiate the object. PHP will automatically call this special function when instantiating the object.
For example, you could rewrite the Demo class in the following way:
<?php class Demo { private $name; public function __construct($name) { $this->name = $name; } function sayHello() { print "Hello $this->name!"; } } ?> The __construct function will be automatically invoked when you instantiate a new object of class Demo.
| Note | Note for PHP4 users: In PHP4, object constructors were functions with the same name as the class. PHP5 changed this to use a unified constructor scheme. For backward compatibility, PHP first looks for a function called __construct, but if none is found it will still look for a function with the same name as the class (public function Demo() in the preceding example). |
If you have a class that does not require any special initialization code to be run, you don't need to create a constructor. As you saw in the first version of the Demo class, PHP automatically does what it needs to do to create that object. Create a constructor function only when you need one.
The object variables that you create are removed from system memory when the requested page has completed running, when the variable falls out of scope, or when it is explicitly set to null. In PHP5 you can trap the destruction of the object and take actions when that happens. To do so, create a function called __destruct with no parameters. Before the object is destroyed, this function is called automatically, if it exists.
Calling this function gives you the opportunity to perform any last-minute clean-up, such as closing file handles or database connections that might have been opened by the class, or any other last-minute housekeeping that might be needed before the object is destroyed.
The following example writes information to a log file when the object is destroyed that notes how long the object existed. If you have objects that are particularly memory or CPU intensive, a technique like this can be used to allow you to analyze system performance and look for ways to reduce overhead.
As with most of the database examples in this book, this one uses PostgreSQL as its platform. The authors firmly believe that the advanced features, transaction support, and robust stored procedure mechanism of PostgreSQL make it a superior alternative to MySQL and other open-source RDBMSs for large-scale enterprise software development. If you don't have a PostgreSQL environment at your disposal, feel free to make the appropriate modifications for the database platform you use.
Create a table called "widget" using the following SQL statement:
CREATE TABLE "widget" ( "widgetid" SERIAL PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, "name" varchar(255) NOT NULL, "description" text );
Insert some data:
INSERT INTO "widget" ("name", "description") VALUES('Foo', 'This is a footacular widget!');
Create a file called class.Widget.php and enter the following code:
<?php class Widget { private $id; private $name; private $description; private $hDB; private $needsUpdating = false; public function __construct($widgetID) { //The widgetID parameter is the primary key of a //record in the database containing the information //for this object //Create a connection handle and store it in a private member variable $this->hDB = pg_connect('dbname=parts user=postgres'); if(! is_resource($this->hDB)) { throw new Exception('Unable to connect to the database.'); } $sql = "SELECT \"name\", \"description\" FROM widget WHERE widgetid = $widgetID"; $rs = pg_query($this->hDB, $sql); if(! is_resource($rs)) { throw new Exception("An error occurred selecting from the database."); } if(! pg_num_rows($rs)) { throw new Exception('The specified widget does not exist!'); } $data = pg_fetch_array($rs); $this->id = $widgetID; $this->name = $data['name']; $this->description = $data['description']; } public function getName() { return $this->name; } public function getDescription() { return $this->description; } public function setName($name) { $this->name = $name; $this->needsUpdating = true; } public function setDescription($description) { $this->description = $description; $this->needsUpdating = true; } public function __destruct() { if(! $this->needsUpdating) { return; } $sql = 'UPDATE "widget" SET '; $sql .= "\"name\" = '" . pg_escape_string($this->name) . "', "; $sql .= "\"description\" = '" . pg_escape_string ($this->description) . "' "; $sql .= "WHERE widgetBACKGROUND-COLOR: #d9d9d9">$rs = pg_query($this->hDB, $sql); if(! is_resource($rs)) { throw new Exception('An error occurred updating the database'); } //You're done with the database. Close the connection handle. pg_close($this->hDB); } } ?>
The constructor to this object opens a connection to a database called parts using the default super-user account postgres. This connection handle is preserved in a private member variable for use later on. The ID value passed as a parameter to the constructor is used to construct a SQL statement that fetches the information for the widget with the specified primary key in the database. The data from the database is then assigned to private member variables for use with the get and set functions. Note that if anything should go wrong, the constructor throws exceptions, so be sure to wrap any attempts to construct a Widget object in try...catch blocks.
The two accessor methods getName() and getDescription() allow you to fetch the values of the private member variables. Similarly, the setName() and setDescription() methods allows you to assign a new value to those variables. Note that when a new value is assigned, the needsUpdating value is set to true. If nothing changes, then nothing needs to be updated.
To test this, create a file called testWidget.php with the following content:
<?php require_once('class.Widget.php'); try { $objWidget = new Widget(1); print "Widget Name: " . $objWidget->getName() . "<br>\n"; print "Widget Description: " . $objWidget->getDescription() . "<br>\n"; $objWidget->setName('Bar'); $objWidget->setDescription('This is a bartacular widget!'); } catch (Exception $e) { die("There was a problem: " . $e->getMessage()); } ?>
Access this file in your Web browser. The first time it runs, the output should be something like:
Widget Name: Foo Widget Description: This is a footacular widget!
Any subsequent call should display:
Widget Name: Bar Widget Description: This is a bartacular widget!
Look at how powerful this technique can be. You can fetch an object from the database, change a property of that object, and automagically write the changed information back to the database with just a few lines of code in testWidget.php. If nothing changes, you don't need to go back to the database, so you save load on the database server and improve the performance of the application.
Users of the object do not necessarily need to understand its internals. If a senior member of the software development team wrote the Widget class, she could give this object to a junior member, who perhaps doesn't understand SQL as well, and the junior member of the team could put this object to use without any knowledge whatsoever of where the data comes from or how to save changes to it. In fact, you could change the data source from a PostgreSQL database to a MySQL database or even an XML file without the junior team member ever knowing or having to touch any of the code that uses this class.
This powerful concept is taken a step further in Chapter 7, when you will meet a generic version of the above class called GenericObject, which you can use out-of-the-box in virtually any project without modification.
If you were creating an application to handle inventory at a car dealership, you would probably need classes like Sedan, PickupTruck, and MiniVan that would correspond to the same types of automobiles in the dealer's inventory. Your application would need not only to show how many of these items you have in stock but also to report on the characteristics of these vehicles so that the salespeople could give the information to customers.
A sedan is a four-door car, and you would probably want to record the back-seat space and the trunk capacity. A pickup truck doesn't have a trunk but does have a cargo bed with a certain capacity, and the truck itself has a towing capacity (the maximum weight of any cargo that can be safely carried). For a minivan, you would probably need to list the number of sliding doors (either one or two) and the number of seats inside.
But each of these vehicles is really just a different type of automobile and as such would share a number of characteristics in your application, such as color, manufacturer, model, year, vehicle identification number, and so on. To ensure that each of the classes has these same properties, you could just copy the code that creates those properties into each of the files containing your class definitions. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, one of the benefits of an OOP approach is code reuse, so of course you don't need to copy code but instead can reuse the properties and methods of these classes through a process called inheritance. Inheritance is the ability for one class to assume the methods and properties of a parent class.
Inheritance enables you to define a base class, in this case Automobile, and say that other classes are a type of Automobile and as such have all the same properties and methods that all Automobiles have. You can say that a Sedan is an Automobile and therefore automatically inherits everything defined by the Automobile class without your having to copy any code. Then you need to write only the additional properties and methods of the Sedan class that are not shared by all automobiles. The only work left for you to do is define the differences; the similarities between the classes are inherited from the base class.
The ability to reuse code is one benefit, but there's a second major advantage to using inheritance. Say that you have a class called Customer with a method buyAutomobile. This method would take one parameter, an object of class Automobile, and its internal operations would print the paperwork needed to document the sale and would decrement the car in question from the inventory system. Because all Sedans, PickupTrucks, and MiniVans are Automobiles, you can pass objects of these classes to a function expecting an Automobile. Because the three specific types inherit from the more generic parent class, you know that they will all have the same base set of properties and methods. As long as you need only the methods and properties common to all Automobiles, you can accept objects of any class that inherits from Automobile.
Consider the example of cats. All cats share some properties. They eat, sleep, purr, and hunt. They also have shared properties weight, fur color, whisker length, and running speed. However, lions have a mane of a certain length (at least, the male lions do), and they growl. Cheetahs have spots. Domesticated cats have neither of these things, yet all three animals are cats.
In PHP you specify that a class is a subset of another by using the keyword extends, which tells PHP that the class you are declaring should inherit all the properties and methods from its parent class, and that you are adding functionality or providing some additional specialization to that class.
If you had to design an application to handle zoo animals, you'd probably need to have classes Cat, Lion, and Cheetah. Before writing any code, plan your class hierarchy in UML diagrams so you have something to work from when you write the code and the documentation of those classes. (We take a closer look at UML in Chapter 2, so don't worry if you don't completely understand what's shown here.) Your class diagram should indicate a parent class Cat with subclasses Lion and Cheetah inheriting from it. Figure 1-1 shows that diagram.
Figure 1-1
Both the Lion and Cheetah classes inherit from Cat, but the Lion class also implements the property maneLength and the method roar(), whereas Cheetah adds the property numberOfSpots.
The Cat class, class.Cat.php, should be implemented as follows:
<?php class Cat { public $weight; //in kg public $furColor; public $whiskerLength; public $maxSpeed; //in km/hr public function eat() { //code for eating... } public function sleep() { //code for sleeping... } public function hunt(Prey $objPrey) { //code for hunting objects of type Prey //which we will not define... } public function purr() { print "purrrrrrr..." . "\n"; } } ?>
This simple class sets up all the properties and methods common to all cats. To create the Lion and Cheetah classes, you could copy all the code from the Cat class to classes called Lion and Cheetah. However, this generates two problems. First, if you find a bug in the Cat class, you have to know to fix it in the Lion and Cheetah classes, as well. This creates more work for you, not less (and creating less work is supposed to be one of the primary advantages of an OO approach).
Second, imagine that you had a method of some other object that looked like this:
public function petTheKitty(Cat $objCat) { $objCat->purr(); } Although petting a lion or cheetah may not be a terribly safe idea, they will purr if they let you get close enough to do so. You should be able to pass an object of class Lion or Cheetah to the petTheKitty() function.
So you need to take the other route to creating the Lion and Cheetah classes, and that's to use inheritance. By using the keyword extends and specifying the name of the class that is extended, you can easily create two new classes that have all the same properties as a regular cat but provide some additional features. For example:
<?php require_once('class.Cat.php'); class Lion extends Cat { public $maneLength; //in cm public function roar() { print "Roarrrrrrrrr!"; } } ?>
And that's it! With the Lion class extending Cat you can now do something like the following:
<?php include('class.Lion.php'); $objLion = new Lion(); $objLion->weight = 200; //kg = ~450 lbs. $objLion->furColor = 'brown'; $objLion->maneLength = 36; //cm = ~14 inches $objLion->eat(); $objLion->roar(); $objLion->sleep(); ?>
So you can invoke the properties and methods of the parent class Cat without having to rewrite all that code. Remember that the extends keyword tells PHP to automatically include all the functionality of a Cat along with any Lion-specific properties or methods. It also tells PHP that a Lion object is also a Cat object, and you can now call the petTheKitty() function with an object of class Lion even though the function declaration uses Cat as the parameter hint:
<?php include('class.Lion.php'); $objLion = new Lion(); $objPetter = new Cat(); $objPetter->petTheKitty($objLion); ?> In this way, any changes you make to the Cat class are automatically inherited by the Lion class. Bug fixes, changes to function internals, or new methods and properties are all passed along to the subclasses of a parent class. In a large, well-designed object hierarchy this can make bug fixing and the addition of enhancements very easy. A small change to one parent class can have a large effect on the entire application.
In this example, you'll see how a custom constructor can be used to extend and specialize a class.
Create a new file called class.Cheetah.php and enter the following:
<?php require_once('class.Cat.php'); class Cheetah extends Cat { public $numberOfSpots; public function __construct() { $this->maxSpeed = 100; } } ?>
Enter the following code into testcats.php:
<?php require_once('class.Cheetah.php'); function petTheKitty(Cat $objCat) { if($objCat->maxSpeed < 5) { $objCat->purr(); } else { print "Can't pet the kitty - it's moving at " . $objCat->maxSpeed . " kilometers per hour!"; } } $objCheetah = new Cheetah(); petTheKitty($objCheetah); $objCat = new Cat(); petTheKitty($objCat); ?>
The Cheetah class adds a new public member variable called numberOfSpots and a constructor that did not exist in the parent Cat class. Now, when you create a new Cheetah, the maxSpeed property (inherited from Cat) is initialized to 100 kilometers per hour (roughly 60 miles per hour), which is the approximate maximum speed of a cheetah over short distances. Note that because a default value for the Cat class isn't specified, the maxSpeed evaluates as 0 (actually, null) in the petTheKitty() function. As those who have ever had a house cat know, the amount of time they spend sleeping means that their maximum speed probably is approaching 0!
By adding new functions, properties, or even constructors and destructors, the subclasses of a parent class can easily extend their functionality and with a minimum amount of code add new features and capabilities to your application.
| Note | When you can say that one class is a special type of some other class, use inheritance to maximize the potential for code reuse and increase the flexibility of your application. |
Just because a child class inherits from a parent doesn't mean that the child class necessarily needs to use the parent class's implementation of a function. For example, if you were designing an application that needed to calculate the area of different geometric shapes, you might have classes called Rectangle and Triangle. Both of these shapes are polygons, and as such these classes will inherit from a parent class called Polygon.
The Polygon class will have a property called numberOfSides and a method called getArea. All polygons have a calculable area; however, the methods for calculating that area can be different for different types of polygons. (A generic equation exists for the area of any polygon; however, it is often less efficient than the shape-specific equations for the simple polygons we're using here.) The formula for the area of a rectangle is w*h, where w is the width of the rectangle and h is the height. The area of a triangle is calculated as 0.5*h*b, where h is the height of a triangle with base b. Figure 1-2 shows some examples of the areas of different types of polygons.
Figure 1-2
For each subclass of Polygon that you create, you will probably want to use an equation different than the default implementation of the area method with one specific to the type of polygon class. By redefining that method for the class, you can provide your own implementation.
In the case of the Rectangle class, you would create two new properties, height and width, and override the Polygon class's implementation of the getArea() method. For the Triangle class, you would probably add properties to store information about the three angles, the height, and the length of the base segment and override the getArea() method. By using inheritance and overriding methods of the parent class, you can allow the subclasses to specialize their implementations of those methods.
A function that takes a Polygon as a parameter and needs to print the area of that polygon will then automatically call the getArea() method of the subclass of Polygon that was passed to it (that is, Rectangle or Triangle). This capability for an OO programming language to automatically determine at runtime which getArea() method to call is known as polymorphism. Polymorphism is the ability of an application to do different things based on the particular object it is acting on. In this case, that means invoking a different getArea() method.
| Note | Override a method in a subclass when the parent class's implementation is different from that required by the subclass. This allows you to specialize the activities of that subclass. |
Sometimes you want to retain the implementation provided by the parent class but also perform some additional activities in the method of the subclass. For example, if you have an application that manages a nonprofit organization, you would probably have a class called Volunteer that would have a method called signUp(); this method would allow the volunteer to sign up for a community service project and add the user to the list of volunteers for that activity.
You might, however, have some users with restrictions, such as a criminal background, that should prevent them from signing up for certain projects. In this case, polymorphism enables you to create a class called RestrictedUser with an overridden signUp() method that first checks the restrictions on the user account against the properties of the project and prevents users from signing up if their restrictions do not allow them to volunteer for a particular activity. If their restrictions do not prohibit them from participating, you should invoke the actions of the parent class to complete their registration.
When you override methods of the parent class, you do not necessarily need to completely rewrite the method. You can continue to use the implementation provided by the parent but add additional specialization for your subclass. In this way, you can reuse code and also provide customizations as required by the business rules.
The capability of one class to inherit the methods and properties of another class is one of the most compelling features of an object-oriented system and allows you to gain an incredible level of efficiency and flexibility in your applications.
In this example, you'll create two classes Rectangle and Square. A square is a special kind of rectangle. Anything you can do with a rectangle you can do with a square; however, because a rectangle has two different side lengths and a square has only one, you need to do some things differently.
Create a file called class.Rectangle.php and add the following code:
<?php class Rectangle { public $height; public $width; public function __construct($width, $height) { $this->width = $width; $this->height = $height; } public function getArea() { return $this->height * $this->width; } } ?>
This is a fairly straightforward implementation of a class to model a rectangle. The constructor takes parameters for the width and height, and the area function calculates the area of the rectangle by multiplying them together.
Now take a look at class.Square.php, shown next:
<?php require_once('class.Rectangle.php'); class Square extends Rectangle { public function __construct($size) { $this->height = $size; $this->width = $size; } public function getArea() { return pow($this->height, 2); } } ?>
This code overrides both the constructor and the getArea() method. For a square to be a square, both sides must be of the same length. As a result, you need only one parameter for the constructor. If more than one parameter is passed to the function, any values after the first are ignored.
| Note | PHP does not raise an error if the number of parameters passed to a user-defined function is greater than the number of parameters established in the function declaration. In a few cases, this is actually desired behavior. If you'd like to learn more, see the documentation of the built-in func_get_args() function. |
The getArea() function also was overridden. The implementation in the Rectangle class would have returned a perfectly correct result for the Square objects. The method was overridden to improve application performance (although in this case the performance benefit is minuscule). It is faster for PHP to fetch one property and compute its square than to fetch two properties and multiply them together.
By overriding constructors, destructors, and methods, you can alter aspects of how subclasses operate.
Sometimes you want to preserve the functionality provided by the parent. You don't need to completely override the function; you just need to add something to it. You could copy all the code from the parent method into the subclass's method, but as you've already seen, OOP offers you better ways of doing this than just copying lines of code.
To call the functionality provided by the parent, use the syntax parent::[function name]. When you just want to add additional behavior to a method, first you call parent::[function name] and then add your additional code. When extending a function in this way, always call the method on the parent before doing anything else. Doing so ensures that any changes to the operation of the parent won't break your code.
| Note | Because the parent class may be expecting the object to be in a certain state, or may alter the state of the object, overwrite property values, or manipulate the object's internal data, always invoke the parent method before adding your own code when extending an inherited method. |
The example has two classes: Customer and SweepstakesCustomer. A supermarket has an application that from time to time switches which class is being used in the cash register application when certain promotions are run. Each customer who comes in has his or her own ID value (which comes from a database) as well as a customer number, which indicates how many customers have come to the supermarket before him or her. For this sweepstakes, the millionth customer wins a prize.
Create a file called class.Customer.php and add the following:
<?php class Customer { public $id; public $customerNumber; public $name; public function __construct($customerID) { //fetch customer infomation from the database // //We're hard coding these values here, but in a real application //these values would come from a database $data = array(); $data['customerNumber'] = 1000000; $data['name'] = 'Jane Johnson'; //Assign the values from the database to this object $this->id = $customerID; $this->name = $data['name']; $this->customerNumber = $data['customerNumber']; } } ?>
Create a file called class.SweepstakesCustomer.php and type this code:
<?php require_once('class.Customer.php'); class SweepstakesCustomer extends Customer { public function __construct($customerID) { parent::__construct($customerID); if($this->customerNumber == 1000000) { print "Congratulations $this->name! You're our millionth customer! " . "You win a year's supply of frozen fish sticks! "; } } } ?>
The Customer class initializes values from the database based on the customer ID. You would most likely retrieve the customer ID from a loyalty program swipe card like the type available at most larger grocery store chains. With the customer ID, you can fetch the customer's personal data from the database (just hard-coded in this example) along with an integer value representing how many customers have entered the store before that customer. Store all this information in public member variables.
The SweepstakesCustomer class adds a bit of extra functionality to the constructor. You first invoke the parent class's constructor functionality by calling parent::_construct and passing to it the parameters it expects. You then look at the customerNumber property. If this customer is the millionth, you inform this customer that he or she has won a prize.
To see how to use this class, create a file called testCustomer.php and enter the following code:
<?php require_once('class.SweepstakesCustomer.php'); //since this file already includes class.Customer.php, there's //no need to pull that file in, as well. function greetCustomer(Customer $objCust) { print "Welcome back to the store $objCust->name!"; } //Change this value to change the class used to create this customer object $promotionCurrentlyRunning = true; if ($promotionCurrentlyRunning) { $objCust = new SweepstakesCustomer(12345); } else { $objCust = new Customer(12345); } greetCustomer($objCust); ?>
Run testCustomer.php in your browser with the $promotionCurrentlyRunning variable set first to false and then to true. When the value is true, the prize message is displayed.
Sometimes you have a group of classes that are not necessarily related through an inheritance-type relationship. You may have totally different classes that just happen to share some behaviors in common. For example, both a jar and a door can be opened and closed, however, they are in no other way related. No matter the kind of jar or the kind of door, they both can carry out these activities, but there is no other common thread between them.
You see this same concept in OOP as well. An interface enables you to specify that an object is capable of performing a certain function, but it does not necessarily tell you how the object does so. An interface is a contract between unrelated objects to perform a common function. An object that implements this interface is guaranteeing to its users that it is capable of performing all the functions defined by the interface specification. Bicycles and footballs are totally different things; however, objects representing those items in a sporting goods store inventory system must be capable of interacting with that system.
By declaring an interface and then implementing it in your objects, you can hand completely different classes to common functions. The following example shows the rather prosaic door-and-jar analogy.
Create a file called interface.Opener.php:
<?php interface Openable { abstract function open(); abstract function close(); } ?>
Just as you name your class files class.[class name].php, you should use the same convention with interfaces and call them interface.[interface name].php.
You declare the interface Openable using a syntax similar to that of a class, except that you substitute the word interface for the word class. An interface does not have member variables. It does not specify an implementation of any of its member functions.
Because no implementation is specified, you declare these functions to be abstract. Doing so tells PHP that any class implementing this interface is responsible for providing an implementation of the functions. If you fail to provide an implementation of all the abstract methods of an interface, PHP will raise a runtime error. You may not selectively choose some of the abstract methods to implement. You must provide implementations of them all.
The Openable interface is a contract with other parts of the application that says any class implementing this interface will provide two methods, called open() and close(), that take no parameters. With this agreed-upon set of methods, you can allow very different objects to pass into the same function without the need for an inherited relationship to exist between them.
Create the following files, beginning with class.Door.php:
<?php require_once('interface.Openable.php'); class Door implements Openable { private $_locked = false; public function open() { if($this->_locked) { print "Can't open the door. It's locked."; } else { print "creak...<br>"; } } public function close() { print "Slam!!<br>"; } public function lockDoor() { $this->_locked = true; } public function unlockDoor() { $this->_locked = false; } } ?>
and then class.Jar.php:
<? require_once('interface.Openable.php'); class Jar implements Openable { private $contents; public function __construct($contents) { $this->contents = $contents; } public function open() { print "the jar is now open<br>"; } public function close() { print "the jar is now closed<br>"; } } ?>
To use these files, create a new file called testOpenable.php in the same directory.
<?php require_once('class.Door.php'); require_once('class.Jar.php); function openSomething(Openable $obj) { $obj->open(); } $objDoor = new Door(); $objJar = new Jar("jelly"); openSomething($objDoor); openSomething($objJar); ?>
Because both the Door class and the Jar class implement the Openable interface, you can pass both to the openSomething() function. Because that function accepts only something that implements the Openable interface, you know that you can call the functions open() and close() within it. However, you should not attempt to access the contents property of the Jar class or utilize the lock() or unlock() functions of the Door class within the openSomething() function, because that property and those methods are not part of the interface. The interface contract guarantees that you have open() and close() and nothing else.
By using interfaces in your application, you can allow completely different and unrelated objects to talk to each other with a guarantee that they will be able to interact on the terms specified in the interface. The interface is a contract to provide certain methods.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, objects enable you to hide the details of their implementation from users of the object. You do not need to know whether the Volunteer class mentioned earlier stores information in a database, a flat text file, an XML document, or other data storage mechanism to be able to invoke the signUp() method. Similarly, you do not need to know whether the information about the volunteer contained within the object is implemented as single variables, an array, or even other objects. This ability to hide the details of implementation is known as encapsulation. Generally speaking, encapsulation refers to two concepts: protecting a class's internal data from code outside that class, and hiding the details of implementation.
The word encapsulate literally means to place in a capsule, or outer container. A well-designed class provides a complete outer shell around its internals and presents an interface to code outside the class that is wholly separated from the particulars of those internals. By doing so, you gain two advantages: you can change the implementation details at any time without affecting code that uses your class, and, because you know that nothing outside your class can inadvertently modify the state or property values of an object built from your class without your knowledge, you can trust the state of the object and the value of its properties to be valid and to make sense.
The member variables of a class and its functions have a visibility. Visibility refers to what can be seen by code outside the class. Private member variables and functions are not accessible to code outside the class and are used for the class's internal implementation. Protected member variables and functions are visible only to the subclasses of the class. Public member variables and functions are usable by any code, inside or outside the class.
Generally speaking, all internal member variables of a class should be declared private. Any access needed to those variables by code outside the class should be done through an accessor method. You don't let someone who wants you to try a new food blindfold and force-feed you; you need to be able to examine the item and determine whether you want to allow it into your body. Similarly, when an object wants to allow code outside it to change properties or in some other way affect its internal data, by encapsulating access to that data in a public function (and by keeping the internal data private), you have the opportunity to validate the changes and accept or reject them.
For example, if you are building an application for a bank that handles details of customer accounts, you might have an Account object with a property called totalBalance and methods called makeDeposit() and makeWithdrawal(). The total balance property should be read-only. The only way to affect the balance is to make a withdrawal or a deposit. If the totalBalance property were to be implemented as a public member variable, you could write code that would increase the value of that variable without having to actually make a deposit. This approach would, obviously, be bad for the bank. Instead, you should implement this property as a private member variable and provide a public method called getTotalBalance(), which returns the value of that private member variable. Because the variable storing the value of the account balance is private, you can't manipulate it directly. Because the only public methods that affect the account balance are makeWithdrawal() and makeDeposit(), you will have to actually make a deposit if you want to increase the value of your account.
By allowing you to hide the details of implementation and protect access to internal member variables, an object-oriented software development approach gives you a flexible, stable application.
| Note | Encapsulation of internal data and method implementations allows an object-oriented software system to protect and control access to data and hide the details of implementation. |
