[development] Drupal - to use objects or arrays

[Larry Garfield]

I think the general guideline is "use what makes semantic sense at the time".  
A single entity is an object.  (Eg, nodes, users, etc.)  A list of things is 
an array.  A list of entities is an array of objects.

When you get into really complex data structures, like FAPI, then I think 
deeply-nested arrays are easier to work with and more predictable (esp. 
between PHP 4 and PHP 5) than deeply-nested objects.  You can have an object 
one of whose properties is a complex nested array (Nodes created with CCK, 
esp. in Drupal 5, do that).  

There's no hard rule, but I think "what makes semantic sense when writing it" 
is the guideline.  Oh yes, and when iterating over records from a database 
where it really doesn't make a difference, using db_fetch_object() seems more 
common than db_fetch_array(), simply because there's fewer funky characters 
involved with objects than arrays. :-)

On Tuesday 09 January 2007 3:57 pm, Doug Green wrote:
> To use objects or arrays?  What is the "Drupal way"?  I'd rather write code
> using objects (php's stdClass).  But I've run into a ton of problems using
> objects on php4.
>
> The CiviCRM folks have this handy guide for php5 -> php4:
>
>
>
> http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Writing+PHP4+Compatible+code
>
>
>
> But even after using it, I'm having difficulties.  I'm starting to conclude
> that I should convert all my object references to arrays.  I only see a
> couple of object references in core, and none to anything complicated
> (arrays of objects, objects pointing to objects, object elements of arrays
> of objects, etc).
>
>
>
> Doug Green
>
> www.douggreenconsulting.com <http://www.douggreenconsulting.com/>
>
> www.civicactions.com
>
>
>
> Changing the world one node at a time!

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
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