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inheritance, fluent interfaces, and code completion [message #87247]

Fri, 19 December 2008 13:26

Geraint Hywel

Messages: 23
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Hi.

I have an abstract base class called Article. It has a mutator like this:

/**
* Set the Title of the Article
*
* @param string $title
* @return Article
*/
public function setTitle($title = null)
{
if (! is_string($title))
throw new Exception('Invalid title');
$this->title = $title;
return $this;
}

I have a concrete sub class called News Article. It has a mutator like
this:

/**
* Sets the Role that is permitted to view this article
*
* @param string $role
* @return NewsArticle
*/
public function setRole($role = null)
{
if (! is_string($role))
throw new Exception(sprintf("Invalid role: '%s'", $role));
$this->role = $role;
return $this;
}

This fluent interface allows me to write code like this:

$article = new NewsArticle();
$article
->setRole('public')
->setTitle('Foo Bar');

PDT gives me nice code completion for this.

However, code completion breaks when I use methods from the abstract class
(even though the code works just fine):

$article
->setTitle('Foo Bar')
->setRole('public'); // no code completion here

I guess this is because setTitle has @return Article in the doc block.

I could change it to @return Article|NewsArticle, but this feels wrong,
since the base class shouldn't know anything about classes that derive from
it.

Is there a better way to do it?

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Re: inheritance, fluent interfaces, and code completion [message #87325 is a reply to message #87247]

Sat, 20 December 2008 08:11

Eclipse User

Originally posted by: michael.zend.com

Is setRole() declared as abstract method in your Article class ?

"Geraint Howell" <G.S.J.Howell@Swansea.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:gig7dl$ugu$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi.
>
> I have an abstract base class called Article. It has a mutator like this:
>
> /**
> * Set the Title of the Article
> *
> * @param string $title
> * @return Article
> */
> public function setTitle($title = null)
> {
> if (! is_string($title))
> throw new Exception('Invalid title');
> $this->title = $title;
> return $this;
> }
>
> I have a concrete sub class called News Article. It has a mutator like
> this:
>
> /**
> * Sets the Role that is permitted to view this article
> *
> * @param string $role
> * @return NewsArticle
> */
> public function setRole($role = null)
> {
> if (! is_string($role))
> throw new Exception(sprintf("Invalid role: '%s'", $role));
> $this->role = $role;
> return $this;
> }
>
> This fluent interface allows me to write code like this:
>
> $article = new NewsArticle();
> $article
> ->setRole('public')
> ->setTitle('Foo Bar');
>
> PDT gives me nice code completion for this.
>
> However, code completion breaks when I use methods from the abstract class
> (even though the code works just fine):
>
> $article
> ->setTitle('Foo Bar')
> ->setRole('public'); // no code completion here
>
> I guess this is because setTitle has @return Article in the doc block.
>
> I could change it to @return Article|NewsArticle, but this feels wrong,
> since the base class shouldn't know anything about classes that derive
> from
> it.
>
> Is there a better way to do it?
>
>

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Re: inheritance, fluent interfaces, and code completion [message #87516 is a reply to message #87325]

Tue, 23 December 2008 00:20

Geraint Hywel

Messages: 23
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Michael Spector wrote:
> Is setRole() declared as abstract method in your Article class ?

No. I (will) have other classes that are derived from Article that won't
have this functionality, so I don't want it in the base class.

I think the only way I could get the code completion working would be to
override setTitle() in NewsArticle:

/**
* Set the Title of the Article
*
* @param string $title
* @return NewsArticle
*/
public function setTitle($title = null)
{
parent::setTitle($title);
}

That'd get old pretty fast, though.

I'm actually starting to wonder if the inheritance would work at all in a
more strongly typed language. I don't think Java, for example, would let
me get away with the following:

NewsArticle newsArticle = new Article();

I might need to have a rethink this one. Maybe it's fluent OR
inheritance, but not both.

Thanks for your input.

G.

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