Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:91424
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain basereality.com from 209.85.161.176 cause and error)
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAObuZdvXu-31U6mXpaHWGt_bCOUYAiSK1MByhoG541gc3Hhbvg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CA+kxMuTHbsYAXe+J+jrFz+ZeguacEyUxCUpFJE8jMee_5+u_5g@mail.gmail.com>
	<CADyq6sJCtY7oBxrFt+3YVrfz=gdRkgRmbk4y3ytgzHmRVWbUAA@mail.gmail.com>
	<CAObuZdt+b3v_4hWO+aZ+VhsGKerSRAUxhYiS4EJqcNmn8YmXzA@mail.gmail.com>
	<CAObuZdvXu-31U6mXpaHWGt_bCOUYAiSK1MByhoG541gc3Hhbvg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2016 22:11:16 +0000
Message-ID: <CA+kxMuQOqp=_qoOiR7Qc6L8zXE1hhk__ph6PTEi0iCXVQ_frqA@mail.gmail.com>
To: Ryan Pallas <derokorian@gmail.com>
Cc: Marco Pivetta <ocramius@gmail.com>, "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Callable constructors
From: danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

On 25 February 2016 at 18:32, Ryan Pallas <derokorian@gmail.com> wrote:
> If fetchAll is coming from PDO. then you could have simply done this:
>
> $records = $db->someQuery()->fetchAll(MyRecord::class);

That is a great argument as to why constructors should be callable
without using the 'new'.

It's been possible to do that in PDO for years, and people have been
using it, and liking it, even if they weren't aware that 'under the
hood' the PDO extension was doing the equivalent of calling 'new' as a
callable.

But why is it restricted to PDO? Why can't I do the equivalent with
other DB libraries of my choice? Why can't I use it with userland
libraries that retrieve data from Redis, Mongo or any other
datasource?

It has shown to be a useful pattern inside PDO. We should be
empowering userland developers to have the same tools available to
them as extensions do, wherever possible.

This RFC would allow the equivalent of PDO::FETCH_CLASS to be
implemented by userland code. Which sounds great to me.

> Moreover, if you want to pass in a callable that creates the class, why not
> just create a method on that class called create (or whatever) much the
> same way that singletons often work.

Why should every PHP developer have to jump through that hoop, why
can't we (as the RFC proposes) make constructors be callable, instead
of having to create another method just to call something that should
have been callable in the first place?

And to be precise, people need to use code that was either written
outside their organisation, or within their organisation but in
another department. In either case it wouldn't be possible to alter
the code just to make it callable in a certain way. And so it would be
easier if the language just supported something that could have been
supported right from the start.

cheers
Dan