README

Bring a bit of "true OOP" to your PHP code by using primitives (strings, numbers, arrays) as a first-class objects.

Inspired by

Most of the problems in software engineering occurs by the reason of variables get incorrect values somewhere in your code (c) Erlang authors.

Why?

When you assigned some value to $x somewhere, you always need to check it in several places where $x can be used (in other functions and even other files too). And in case of problems you need to trace your code and find where your $x got incorrect value. I think it is much better to be sure that you always have a valid value inside your $x, anywhere, at any moment, in any line of your code.

Simple rule: if you have a variable - it contains a valid value.
Always.

When you are expecting several "primitive types" as an arguments to your function, you always need to validate its inside. This is an unefficient way which provides a lot of unusable code. It's much better to validate and operate with them by convention-like principle bringed by true functional languages:

Each thing must be an object.

Key ideas

String is an object. Numeric is an object. Array is an object (and it contains objects too). Do you want to write something like this?

function doCoolStuff( String $name, Numeric $weight ) {
  // you will get exception if $name is not string, and/or $weight is not numeric,
  // without ANY other checks or validations in your function's body.
}

Or, for example:

$data->getHistoryOfChanges() // -> [ 'value 1', 'value 2', null, 'value 3' ]

Or, maybe:

"Person"->pluralize() // -> "People"

It may be possible now :)

Current features

String object
Numeric object
Array object (Traversable)
Several constraints (numeric, min, max, string)
History of value changes

How it works

Look at the code examples in test/PrimitiveObjectsTest.php to understand.

All validations and constraints incapsulated into object classes, and in case of incorrect data you will get an exception before it comes to your function's body.

You can create "immutable objects" by declining data changes if value is already set.

You can construct your own "types" of objects by combining different constraints even in runtime. For example, you can create:

array of strings,
with constraint of 10 items max,
and with constraint each item to be a string with length in range 1..255,
and begins with capitalized letter,
and so on :)

Caveats

This approach always will be slower than real primitives in highload calculations.

License

General Public License.

TODO

Any suggestions?

grido / primitive-objects

Maintainers

Details