NYCPHP Meetup

[Yitzchak Schaffer]

Hello all,

As I work on refactoring an app I'm working on and getting more of a 
feel for OOP, I wonder if folks can recommend any best-practices guides 
for general OOP principles.  I read most of the Zandstra book, and found 
it very helpful for understanding the fundamentals of the OOP approach, 
and patterns in particular.

Now I'm looking for something a bit more nuts-and-bolts rigorous; as an 
example of couple questions I had recently:

When should one use a factory method
$foo = Foo::factory( $this )
as opposed to using the constructor in the client code
$foo = new Foo( $this )
?

And as corollary, what belongs in a constructor and what doesn't?  In
http://www.slideshare.net/sebastian_bergmann/introduction-to-phpunit-best-practices
slides 19-22, Sebastian Bergmann of PHPUnit alludes to this question, 
but in that presentation is apparently assuming the audience is familiar 
with the answer, and doesn't go into it; his tagline is "don't do work 
in the constructor," but rather do something like the following.  I 
don't know what does and does not constitute "work."

$foo = new Foo( $this );
$foo->build();

Based on Amazon reviews, I just bought a copy of the 1994 ed of 
Object-Oriented Software Construction : Bertrand Meyer on Half.com; any 
further recommendations?

Thanks,

-- 
Yitzchak Schaffer
Systems Manager
Touro College Libraries
33 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
Fax (212) 627-3197
Email yitzchak.schaffer at tourolib.org

Access Problems? Contact systems.library at touro.edu