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To: Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>
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Content-Type: text/plain
Organization: InterJinn
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:51:26 -0400
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Class Properties in Interfaces?
From: robert@interjinn.com (Robert Cummings)


On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 23:37 -0700, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
> > $hair = new Hair();
> > $hair->colour = 'brown';
> 
> You can do this without pre-defining any properties.

yes but the following (as I'm you certainly know):

    echo $hair->colour

generates an E_NOTICE if the property isn't defined.

> > The above is a much less wordy way of doing the following:
> 
> No, it is not the same. You can override what happens when you do 
> setColor - like send notification to some other object or set also 
> matching color for the shoes, etc. :) but you can't have any behavior 
> attached to setting value.

But it is the same... I can override the behaviour in magic get/set
methods if I want. But the point is not necessarily to override, only to
ensure the property is defined by all users of the interface. One
approach (the getter/setter approach) is more versatile downstream (in
the possibly unlikely event that the semantics for the property need to
change), the other approach is more efficient.

> > This is a feature of a dynamic language, not a flaw in my argument. And
> 
> Not having rigid definitions of properties is also a feature of dynamic 
> language ;)

There's nothing rigid about what Jeremy proposed. He just asked why
properties can't be part of an interface definition. I don't see why
not, I've shown the equivalence of properties to getter/setter methods
(in simple usage case anyways), and so I've argued the point. It's not a
particularly necessary feature for me, but that doesn't negate his
original question as to why they couldn't be supported. Anyways, I'll
stop being noisy on the list now. Nothing more to add :)

Cheers,
Rob.
-- 
http://www.interjinn.com
Application and Templating Framework for PHP