Question

I have a users model that has a lot of properties such as first_name, last_name, email, address, address2…etc

I am writing a php class to manage these properties, but it seems like I am writing a lot of the same code. (Getters and setters). Should I use magic methods to manage this? It seems like an OK idea, but I don’t want incorrect properties being set. Any ideas?

<?php
class User
{
    private $username;
    private $email
    private $first_name;
    private $last_name;
    private $address;
    private $address2;

    function __construct()
    {

    }

        function getUsername()
        {
            return $this->username
        }


        function setUsername($username)
        {
            $this->username = $username;
        }

        ...
}
?>

Answer 1

Unless you are doing validation on the input, there’s no point using getters/setters here in my opinion.

Make the properties public, and override the getters/setters for invalid properties using magic methods:

class User
{
    public $username;
    public $email;
    public $first_name;
    public $last_name;
    public $address;
    public $address2;

    public function __get($var) {
        throw new Exception("Invalid property $var");
    }

    public function __set($var, $value) {
        $this->__get($var);
    }

}

$user = new User;
$user->username = 'foo';  // works
$user->foo = 'bar';       // errors