Question

I was wondering if it is bad convention to declare my member variables inside an array that I later use somewhere else (in the code below, I pass into the insertArray() function). Here my code:

class myClass{

    private $ID;
    private $name;
    private $type;
    private $catID;
    private $isDefault;
    private $isRequired;

    function __construct($compID = 0, $catID = 0, $name = '', $type = '', $default = false, $required = false){

    $myArray = array(
        'name'       => ($this->name = $name),
        'type'       => ($this->type = $type),
        'catID'      => ($this->catID  = $catID),
        'isDefault'  => ($this->isDefault = $default),
        'isRequired' => ($this->required  = $required)
    )
    self::insertArray($myArray);
   }
 }

Is it bad to define my member variables inside $myArray? I’m pretty sure in php that syntax of the form ($this->value = $value) will store $value inside $this->value and then just evaluate to ($this->value).

Answer 1

If it’s bad or not depends on the coding guidelines you follow. Most of them allow only one operation per line but you have two.

Take a look at the PSR-2 standard for example.

It’s also not that easy to read because it’s not common.