Ok -- this makes more sense to me, but I'm going to restate in my own words, and if you have a second to let me know if I'm understanding, I'd appreciate it.

Generic get/set methods can be bad - especially with anything more complicated then a piece of information that's unlikely to change.

There's nothing inherently wrong with 

$object->get("theIDData")

[download]

Except it isn't entirely object oriented in terms of thought process (what vs how), and that it limits you if you decide to make changes later. Example: if an object instance has an "id" attribute, you may someday want to take that id from, say, a database, and change it before you hand it back to the calling program, because there's a new ID structure in place, but the old database can't (for some mythical reason) be changed.

So .. a simple ->get ->set set of methods can be appropriate, but only if you never expect to have to do any work with the data placed inside the object.

I'm slowly getting my mind wrapped around the basics of OO with the help of this site, and all its tutorials. Thanks again for everyone's input.

# Erik

In reply to Re: •Re: OO Getters/Setters by theAcolyte
in thread OO Getters/Setters by theAcolyte

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