Question

Ok, i got a error class, where you can do $error->add($message); which will store the $message to an array inside the class.

    private $_errorArray = array();

    public function add($message){
        $this->_errorArray[] = $message;
    }
    public function output(){
        return $this->_errorArray;
    }
    public function exists(){
        if(empty($this->_errorArray)){
            return false;
        }else{
            return true;
        }
    }
}

Now what if i have a class AlbumMapper, that grabs and assigns variables. But if it cant grab (no rows to select), then it should add a message to this error.

class AlbumMapper {
    private $_pdo;

    function __construct($pdo){
        $this->_pdo = $pdo;
    }
    public function fetch($album){
        $columns = "id, title, uID, date";
        $table = TABLE_USERS_ALBUMS;
        $query = "SELECT ".$columns." FROM ".$table." WHERE id=:id";
        $query = $this->_pdo->prepare($query);
        $query->bindValue(":id", $album->id());
        $query->execute();

        if( ! $data = $query->fetch() ) { $errors->add("Album not exists"); }

        $album->assign($data);
    }
}

And, i would like to output the error OUTSIDE the class.
So:

$error = new errors();
$albumMapper->fetch($album);
if ( $error->exists() ) { $error->output(); }

I can make this work, if i pass the $error to the fetch() method, but then i would need to pass the $error to all my methods, and it dont feel the best way to do it.

I can also do this by creating the object inside the object $albumMapper, so in the constructor it does: $error = new errors(); and then you can add the errors to this, but how would i output the errors then, if any?

Answer 1

Perhaps this is a stupid suggestion, but why aren’t you using Exceptions?

The beautiful thing about Exceptions is that they bypass normal code flow so you don’t have to worry about return values and such.