Question

I view my PHP code and JS code as one cohesive unit. I want to begin there interaction by creating an object on the client that looks like the structure below.

By doing this I only have to pass around one object. Sometimes all of the fields are populated, sometimes only 2 or more of the fields are populated.

So by trading off some wasted object properties, I only have to concern myself with passing o_p to different modules with in the MVC on the client and server.

I have functions to convert JavaScript to JSON to PHP.

Is this a valid approach?

Mo.o_p = function (type) {
    return {

        // current result or data about the data

        result :  0,

        // send client data

        client :  {
            model :  type,
            page  :  {},
            args  :  {}
        },

        // returned server data

        server :  {
            bookmarks  :  {},
            tweets    :  {},
            smalls    :  {}
        }
    };
};

Answer 1

If your model requires these attributes and being empty is an important information for your application, i see no problem there. On the other hand, if your client and server objects are not necessarily connected and handled by different processes, there would be no need to couple them. Just passing some empty attributes should not be a performance problem.