I hate dealing with associative arrays when i'm writing client code. The
problem with arrays is that there is no context. There is no special knowl...
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I'm an advocate of value objects by experience and totally support your post!
Another nice side effect is, that you will have a nice code suggest for the FileSenderReport, which you wouldn't have if you return an array.
Thanks! Value objects FTW!
I get where you're coming from, but this just shifts the coupling from the code to the data. Which is totally fine if you're in a situation where you have complete control over all of your datasources and there aren't any aberrations from the model that was defined at inception, but you can fail pretty hard on what could be valid data if you go too far down this road.
I think there's definitely merit into asking yourself whether or not an associative array is appropriate for your use case before forging ahead, but taking it as a maxim is just gonna line you up for all sorts of different trouble.
Having strictly defined interfaces solely for data in a language that's (I've been assuming by design) not strictly typed seems like trying to make a sledgehammer into a bandsaw by yelling at it to be sharper. Why not build your test suite around standardized return data if that's a requirement instead of trying to make PHP into Java cough*zend*cough.
Thanks for your comment!
Frankly, i'm not really sure if it's that good design to return these sort of reports. To me that means the service has knowledge that there's is some sort of UI where those values are somewhat important. I left myself a backdoor by giving SenderReport a method to print itself which gives the object some behaviour.
I do however think that it's useful to give data some context by encapsulating it into an object. It allows us to fall back on sane defaults and handle other data related issues in a very limited scope. After all you can't tell data to do anything. With objects you can.
I can't say i have much experience about this, but just a hunch that a system can be more robust when the focus is not on what kind of data is processed but what kind of services objects provide for each other.
I totally agree with the concept, but I wouldn't say SenderReport is a value object, but a DTO.
Value objects represent one value (a date, a currency, a language... Even others specific to your domain, like PaymentMethod).
In this case the SenderReport is used to exchange data between the service and the consumer, by keeping immutability and type safety, so it looks like a DTO.
It's sometimes easy to mix those.
Anyway, your statement remains, and as I said, I totally agree with it.
I've used DTO mainly in the context of dealing with databases or REST API's. But your reasoning is very solid, and i agree. I think it's not important what the service does, but what kind of relationship client code has to the server.
Don't return errors. Use exceptions.
IRL i would probably design a FileSender with only the send()-method. If we just look at the send()-method. It's a void method that throws SenderException. However sendFiles() is supposed to send multiple files.
Regarding design we have two alternatives.
stop execution on first failure and get information about the one file that couldn't be sent.
continue execution and return SenderReport with information about every failed file.
Overall i agree that void is a perfectly fine "return type" and it should inform clients about failures with exceptions. No true/false for success/failure. Command Query separation works.
I think typings (especially when paired with unit tests) help alleviate some of the tension caused by this idea of passing around associative arrays. You could always guarantee and have bulletproof signatures for your APIs through documentation. In that sense, even if you're passing around descriptive data objects and have poor documentation, typings, or tests, you're doomed.
Thanks. I definitely recommend using type hinting as it really lets you know quickly if your methods are not receiving or returning the type of data you expect.
Hey, thanks for the article.
I really enjoyed reading it. As I am currently writing in first server backend (in Python though, but I guess some concepts aren't bound by language), I am tripping over my own code and styles of returning values all the time.
A lot of things just went 'click' inside my head on how I can go about streamlining my code.
Glad you liked it! Python equivalent would be to return dictionaries. Although they are actual objects and have some methods, they are too generic to promise anything useful.
Always consider that others could be involved in it some day. That helps to reflect your own work and will at least make it easier for you in the end if you have to look at that code after some months.
I personally always set the goal that I want to make a project open source available on github. That means that others will see this piece of code and they want to understand what I'm doing.
Regarding method signatures i think PHP is doing a good job. AFAIK you can pass a null to method in Java instead of an object. That is very weird and stupid imo. PHP throws a TypeError if the type doesn't match.
I have a specific test case... let's make an article out of it and give general advice to anyone. Well, now imagine, that in another case this would actually help? Just try that. Need an example? How about Amazon AWS APIs?
I moved from PHP to Typescript/nodejs and totally happy, since the latter don't have these problems
You can use anonymous class it'll get rid of creating interface and creating class
But wouldn't that make client code as tightly coupled to implementation of sendFiles() as using an array?
Sometimes minimum abstraction is enough but if you want to expand your logic of course it's better use an interfaced approach.
Want to recommend spatie/data-transfer-object library - it is very useful to make new data objects with minimal boilerplate code.
I said so many nopes reading your post.
Okay. Let's discuss.
When you are building REST APIs, why isn't this an issue for you? Do you have some examples where you can't use value objects over arrays?
You got it! 😊
Well you can pass a null to method in PHP also. php.net/manual/en/migration71.new-...
True. With an important note that the param has to be explicitly defined as nullable.