Question

Would this method

    foreach($data as &$d)
       $obj[]=ClassName::createObject($data);

or

    foreach($data as &$d){
       $obj[] = new ClassName;
       $obj[end($obj)]->loadData($data);
     }

–

     class ClassName{
        public static function createObject($data){
              $obj = new ClassName;
              //do stuff with $data
              return $obj;
        }

        public function loadData($data){
              //do stuff with $data;

        }

     }

The ::createObject method makes for code which is a lot less painful to read while the second method doesn’t have to return huge objects.
I’m not sure how variables are handled in a language like PHP so is there a big difference in performance?
Which method would be best to use?

Answer 1

First looks ok. You don’t need to pass $d by reference in this case. And probably you want ClassName::createObject($d). Still I’d refactor it to:

foreach($data as $d) {
   $obj[]=new ClassName($d);
}

This is just ugly, not for performance reasons:

foreach($data as &$d){
   $obj[] = new ClassName;
   $obj[end($obj)]->loadData($data);
 }

Instead you could do this:

foreach($data as &$d){
   $object = new ClassName;
   $object->loadData($d);
   $obj[] = $object;
 }

If the data is essential for the object – set it from the construct. If the data is optional, then the loadData method makes sense. But if you want to move the construct logic to a static method – this is pointless. No performance advantage.