Is it really that wrong not using setters and getters?

Question

I\'m kind of new in PHP. For some reason in other types of programming languages like JAVA I have no problem with using setters and getters for every single variable, but wh

Answer 1

There is a way to emulate get/set without actually using get/set function class, so your code remains tidy:

$person->name = 'bob';
echo $person->name;

Take a look at this class I have coded.

Typically, when using this class, you would declare all your properties protected (or private). In the event where you'd want to add a behaviour on a property, say strtolower() + ucfirst() on the "name" property, all you'd need to do is declare a protected set_name() function in your class and the behavior should get picked up automatically. Same can be accomplished with get_name().

// Somewhere in your class (that extends my class).
protected function set_name($value) { $this->name = ucfirst(strtolower($value)); }
//

// Now it would store ucfirst(strtolower('bob')) automatically.
$person->name = 'bob';

P.S. Another cool thing is you can make up non-existing fields such as

echo $person->full_name;

without having such fields (as long as there is a get_full_name() function).