I know basics of OOP and I use it for every project including more than about 100 lines of code. However I have a nagging question.
If I have a class that accepts some data through its public method(s) and then does something with/to that data with protected/private methods, is it better to use class properties, or pass data around as method arguments? For example:
class Example{
private $_foo;
private $_bar;
public function insert($foo,$bar){
$this->_foo = $foo;
$this->_bar = $bar;
if($this->check()){
//insert into DB or do some other things
}
}
protected function check(){
//some validation code, return true or false
}
}
Would it be better instead to pass the data to the check() method as arguments without creating class properties, like this:
class Example{
public function insert($foo,$bar){
if($this->check($foo,$bar)){
//insert into DB or do some other things
}
}
private function check($foo,$bar){}
}
As far as I can say, not creating additional variables would decrease memory usage slightly (or am I wrong), but on larger projects this kind of code would get too cumbersome, at least for me. On the other hand, for some simpler things, the latter approach seems more elegant because there's less code involved.
So, what can you tell me about advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches.
Thanks in advance.
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for example gear is something that all bicycles have, but should be private in bicycle because it might need to do something more when someone sets the gear (when you create those setters and getters probably no one do anything but you don't know in future). So a mountainBike shouldn't change the gear itself but rather set the gear, if this specific bicycle wants to have a more composite functionality when the gear is set then it should override its parent setGear() and preferably call it and then do its own things.