Question

I’m working with a [generally not widely used] PHP framework in which the class I’m currently working with has an array of fields that correlate to columns in SQL.

Well, for setting values for class objects there’s a class method setFieldValue and conventionally something like this would be done:

protected $fields = array('id', 'name', 'body');

function setFieldValue($field, $value) {
    switch($field) {
        case 'id':
            return parent::setFieldValue($field, intval($value));
        case 'name':
            return parent::setFieldValue($field, strval($value));
        case 'body':
            return parent::setFieldValue($field, strval($value));
    }
}

I’m looking for something a bit more dynamic (and cleaner, as I’ll have many fields), maybe like:

protected $fields = array('id' => 'intval', 'name' => 'strval', 'body' => 'strval');

function setFieldValue($field, $value) {
    if(array_key_exists($field, $this->fields)) {
        return parent::setFieldValue($field, $fields[$field]($value));
    }
}

Would anyone consider this alternative I’m suggesting bad practice and furthermore would anyone suggest other alternatives?

Answer 1

No, it looks good because the name of the fields aren’t promoted to the outside of that class in both cases – the switch or the array_key_exists. So this should not make any difference, because you solve it internally (privately) which is invisible.

Run your unit-tests before and after the changes to see if everything went smoothly.