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An creational design pattern, which represents an solution for generation objects without specifying the class name. Virtually all methods that generate objects are particular implementations of the Factory Method pattern.
Motivation:
A motivation for this choice is that the creation of the object is delegated to the factory method.
Diagram:
Implementation:
The classes that generates the objects, the common class to extend and the class with the factory method:1// the common class to be extended 2abstract class OutputBase { 3 // output the necessary headers 4 abstract public function header(); 5 6 // resulting body 7 abstract public function body($data); 8 9} 10 11// class for XML ouput 12class XMLOutput extends OutputBase { 13 14 // output XML header 15 public function header() { 16 header('content-type: text/xml'); 17 } 18 19 // xml document 20 public function body($data) { 21 $res = ''; 22 23 $res .= ''; 24 25 foreach ($data as $root => $item) { 26 27 $res .= ''; 28 29 foreach ($item as $key => $val) { 30 $res .= '<'.$key.'>'.$val.''; 31 } 32 33 $res .= ''; 34 } 35 36 $res .= ''; 37 38 return $res; 39 40 } 41 42} 43 44// class for CSV output 45class CSVOutput extends OutputBase { 46 47 // output CSV header 48 public function header() { 49 header("Content-type: text/plain"); 50 } 51 52 // CSV body 53 public function body($data) { 54 $res = ''; 55 56 $keys = array_keys($data[0]); 57 58 foreach ($keys as $key) { 59 $res .= '"'.$key.'";'; 60 } 61 $res .= "\r\n"; 62 63 foreach ($data as $item) { 64 foreach ($item as $val) { 65 $res .= '"'.$val.'";'; 66 } 67 68 $res .= "\r\n"; 69 } 70 71 return $res; 72 } 73} 74 75// the factory method class 76// is abstract so it wont be instantiated 77abstract class OutputFactory { 78 79 // constant for XML type 80 const XML = 1; 81 82 // constant for CSV type 83 const CSV = 2; 84 85 // static factory method 86 public static function getInstance($type) { 87 // depending which constant was received as a parameter 88 // one of the objects will be returned 89 switch ($type) { 90 case self::XML : 91 return new XMLOutput(); 92 break; 93 94 case self::CSV : 95 return new CSVOutput(); 96 break; 97 } 98 99 // if the value received as a parameter is not one of the constants 100 // an exception will be thrown 101 throw new Exception('Invalid class type!'); 102 } 103 104}Example:
1// the data 2$data = array( 3 array( 4 'a' => 1, 5 'b' => 2, 6 'c' => 3 7 ), 8 array( 9 'a' => 4, 10 'b' => 5, 11 'c' => 6 12 ) 13 ); 14 15// try-catch block in case of an exception 16try { 17 // generation the object 18 $obj = OutputFactory::getInstance(OutputFactory::XML); 19 20 // output headers 21 $obj->header(); 22 23 // display body 24 echo $obj->body($data); 25 26} catch (Exception $e) { 27 28 $e->getMessage(); 29 30} -
CodeIgniter is an open-source PHP framework, build for RAD development. This framework is continuously growing in popularity, probably especially since people realized that is much easier to use an open-source framework instead of developing an internal one, but that’s another story. The CodeIgniter 1.7 book from PacktPublishing, written by Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upton is building a big picture about the CodeIgniter 1.7 framework, as an addition to the reference manual.
After all every respectable framework has an detailed reference, with usability examples, more or less comprehensible. When it comes to learning an framework (and not only), an reference is usually not the best place to start from, because is hard to get the big picture when you can only receive atomic answers. That’s why we buy books this days, to have a general image with problems and solutions. And this is where the CodeIgniter 1.7 book comes in.
Initially, when I’ve seen that the title has the version number of the analyzed framework I was a little pessimistic, because usually when you buy a book you don’t want it to be tight up to particular version, isn’t it? Well, not exactly… I had a similar issue with Zend Framework, most books use “older versions” (ex: 1.5-1.6) and I wanted to see an approach using the new features from version 1.8 or greater. After all when you start learning something you usually want the latest version of the framework or what ever it is that you are learning, and when new features appear it will be much easier to simply look then in the reference guide since you already know the basics.
This book seams to start from the beginners level and progressively describe both basic elements as well as the most common problems the user may encounter when developing apps using the CodeIgniter framework. The sample chapter, looks pretty well structured and easy to understand, and from the table of contents it seams to approach all the important subjects. With the hope that the rest of the book will be just as well structured (I’m actually judging a book by the cover?) and a second part to this review will follow I can’t barely wait for the book.
To be continued…
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