[development] About existing explanation of avoiding using classes in OOP coding for Drupal

[Matt Chapman]

There's an issue for this in the queue:

http://drupal.org/node/326881

Although, now that the page is wiki`fied, you can go ahead an edit it, if
you have a better example of where Drupal's architecture works better
without classes. I, for one, still think theme() is a good example, but
reasonable persons may differ.

-Matt



On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:51 PM, <lapurd at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Greetings Everyone,
>
> Is anybody care to collaborate on this (see below)?
> <http://drupal.org/node/547518> <http://drupal.org/node/547518> location
> contain this:
>
> Why Not to Use Classes
>
> The above hopefully clarifies the ways in which Drupal embodies various OOP
> concepts. Why, then, doesn't Drupal move in the direction of using classes
> to solve these problems in the future? Some of the reasons are historical,
> and were discussed earlier. Others, though, become clearer now that we have
> stepped through some of the design patterns used in Drupal.
>
> A good example is the extensibility of the theme system. A theme defines
> functions for each of the interface elements it wants to display in a
> special way. As noted earlier, this makes themes seem like a good candidate
> to inherit from an abstract base class that defines the default rendering of
> the elements.
>
> What happens, though, when a module is added that adds a new interface
> element? The theme should be able to override the rendering of this element
> as well, but if a base class is defined, the new module has no way of adding
> another method to that class. Complicated patterns could be set up to
> emulate this behavior, but Drupal's theme architecture quite elegantly
> handles the situation using its own function dispatch system. In this case
> and others like it, the classes that on the surface would seem to simplify
> the system would end up making it more cumbersome and difficult to extend.
>
> Question is what about using already existing in PHP 5 overloading feature
> <http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.overloading.php><http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.overloading.php>
> ?
> Does authors of article on <http://drupal.org/node/547518><http://drupal.org/node/547518>know about overloading feature?
> Could authors or anybody explain this misconception?
> Or point me out to already existed discussion on OOP subject.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
>
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