Comments for "File_MARC"

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  • Christian Weiske  [2006-09-16 08:52 UTC]

    If this is a PHP5 package, I don't see why you're using
    a) global constants
    b) a singleton object in global namespace. Singletons are to prevent that.
    c) The error stack shouldn't be global, an also should be instance-wise. What if I have 2 marc objects that give errors?
    d) function &getSubfields - Am I wrong or are objects always passed by ref in PHP5? So the ampersand isn't necessary.

  • Dan Scott  [2006-09-16 16:41 UTC]

    Christian:

    Thanks for the comments!

    a, b, c) Most of these issues arise largely due to my use of (and undoubtedly my lack of understanding of) PEAR_Errorstack, based on how I have seen other packages implement error-handling with PEAR_Errorstack. For example, I have not yet been able to figure out how to use message templates with a singleton (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/core.pear.pear-errorstack.seterrormessagetemplate.php notes that setErrorMessage() cannot be called statically). At this point, I plan to revise the package to use PEAR_Exception (conforming with the RFC for error-handling in PHP 5 packages) before going stable; these issues will probably go away when I make that switch.

    I will turn some of the currently defined global constants into class constants (e.g. FILE_MARC_LEADER_LEN) in the next iteration of this package. But the error codes will remain global constants until I finalize the error-handling for the package.

    d) The reference thing was a bit of a hangover from when I first started developing this package. I had thought about creating a PHP 4/5 compatible package, but have since decided to make it a pure PHP 5 package instead. I have now removed all of the extraneous references from this package -- thanks!