Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:95028
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain lsces.co.uk from 217.147.176.230 cause and error)
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Message-ID: <10fbcb03-5de8-4d9a-da1c-7e2bf77937cb@lsces.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 21:07:05 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/45.2
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Simple variable handling.
From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine)

People keep complaining that I do not contribute any proposals to
improve PHP, which to some extent s correct. Except the one thing that I
keep trying to get a handle on is tidying validating of the basic
variables that are the heart of PHP.

validate_var_array() is a case in point, since ALL it should do is
handle an array of simple variables for which we can define REAL
validation rules rather than just a very restricted 'type' rule.
Massaging the way the content of a variable is presented is another part
of the basic functions of handling a variable, and simply providing an
escape option which can be set as part of the variable rules set
eliminates the need for 'New operator (short tag) for context-dependent
escaping' and similar tangential matters. If we have a set of rules
wrapping a variable then everything else just follows on, and the SQL
domain model allows a group of variables to take an identical se of rules.

These are the sorts of things any decent user world library can and does
provide, but if the clock was rolled back prior to all the trouble
created by 'strict typing' and we started again with a more well defined
simple variable I'm sure that much of the conflict could have been
resolved by allowing full validation checks to control an error or
exception depending on the 'style' of PHP a programmer prefers.

If a function is going to return a variable and that variable has under
the hood a set of validation rules, then one can return an error if the
result is faulty. Or even allow a NULL return if a valid answer is not
available ... if that is the style of programming one prefers.
Exceptions handle unmanaged errors, while proper program flow handles
managed ones!

Wrap these intelligent variables inside a class and one can create more
powerful objects but ones which still use all the basic functionality.
Similarly an array of them can be asked to provide a simple 'yes/no' if
all of the variables pass their validation check, or an array of
elements which need processing.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk