Question

Suppose I have a function called checkTemperature($temp) that can return three different possibilities:

1. too hot
2. OK
3. too cold

Would you return integers, such as -1, 0, 1 or 1, 2, 3 (etc..) or strings, such as the above?

What is considered the best practice?

Answer 1

You would typically use enums, but PHP doesn’t straight up have support for an enum construct. However, we can certainly emulate them.

class Temperatures
{
    const TooHot = 1;
    const OK = 2;
    const TooCold = 3;
}

Then you can do

return Temperatures::TooHot;

And compare

if ($retval == Temperatures::OK)

The value you assign your variables is not really important, as long as they are different. You can use the values for something interesting depending on your app and context.