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PHP Iterator Design Pattern I: Access to Aggregates

Published on January 1, 2014 by Bill Sanders in Design Patterns, Iterating through Objects, Iterator and Polymorphism. Closed Tags: , , , , .

iteratorSetting the Table

I tend to think in structural terms to address a given task. I need an object to do “X” and another object to do “Y.” This is in contrast to sequential and procedural thinking; first I’ll do this, and then I’ll do that, and then another thing. Structural thinking is easier on my brain, and it’s a lot easier to make changes and add updates. When it comes to the process of sequentially accessing the elements of an aggregate object (some kind of list), I don’t think of a sequential process, I think of an Iterator design pattern. The Iterator contains both aggregate and iterator objects. That makes it much clearer. Common PHP tasks include iterating through a MySql table. Sometimes MySql table elements are passed to PHP arrays or even XML files. Further, some lists are optimized for searching, such as linked lists and skip lists. We’ll get to those in future posts regarding the Iterator design pattern. However, in PHP, sequential storage outside of a MySql table is typically a numeric or associative array. At this point the focus is on plain vanilla lists stored in aggregate objects we call arrays. Before getting further into this topic, Play the sample and Download the code for an overview:
PlayDownload

According to the Gang of Four, the key idea in the Iterator

is to take the responsibility for access and traversal out of the list object and put it into an iterator object.

Typically, iterating through a list involves something like the following:

?View Code PHP 
< ?php
class StandardIteration
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        $bigList=array('rupiah','peso', 'real', 'rupee',
                       'dollar', 'euro', 'yen', 'pound',
                       'yuan', 'dinar', 'shekel', 'krone',
                       'ringgit', 'rial', 'shilling', 'rand',
                       'ruble', 'dong');
        $counter=0;
        echo "World Currency List 
";
        foreach ($bigList as $currency) 
        {
            echo $counter . ". " . $currency . "
";
            $counter++;
        }
    }
}
$worker=new StandardIteration();
?>

The “list” of elements reside in an array, and using a looping structure, programs can sequentially access all or some of the elements.

Access

Figure 1: Access through a Sequence

Figure 1: Access through a Sequence

When we think of access in PHP OOP, we typically think in terms visibility—private, protected and public. That is certainly an aspect of access, but in looking at lists, even simple one-dimensional ones residing in arrays, access is part of an order. As soon as we get to even slightly more sophisticated lists, we can see the difference in access. Beginning with Figure 1, you can see that when lists are arranged in sequences, the access is based on the position of the element in the order as shown in Figure 1. Above, in the class StandardIteration, you can see such an ordered sequence. The first currency in the list is the rupiah, and the last is the dong. They are in no order other than the one they were placed in the array. To access the Chinese yuan, for example, requires going through 8 iterations before reaching the yuan.

Figure 2: Binary tree access

Figure 2: Binary tree access

Suppose that instead of a sequence (or sequential list), we had used a binary tree as shown in Figure 2. The “7 element” is only three step 1-5-7. Binary trees are used a good deal in programming because the access paths are more efficient. Instead of going through a sequence, you program through the nodes. The quickest route to “7 element” is through the root node (1) then to the 5-node (5) and finally to the 7-element (7). So it should be no surprise that working with different types of lists is important.
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