Tag Archive for 'PHP OOP'

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PHP OOP: Back to Basics

Published on May 13, 2014 by Bill Sanders in Beginning PHP OOP, Design Patterns Principles, Introduction to Design Patterns, OOP and Design Pattern Principles, Raspberry PI and Recursion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

beginBack to Basics

Whenever I venture outside of PHP, which has become more regular as I’m working on app development in both iOS and Android. The former is Objective C and the latter, Java. Both languages are embedded in OOP and design patterns. It is during these ventures abroad (so to speak) that I’m reminded of some core issues in good OOP. I usually notice them when I realize that I’m not exactly paying attention to them myself.

Don’t Have the Constructor Function Do Any Real Work

When I first came across the admonition not to have the constructor function do any real work, I was reading Miško Hevery’s article on a testability flaw due to having the constructor doing real work. More recently, I was reviewing some materials in the second edition of Head First Java, where the user is encouraged to,

Quick! Get out of main!

For some Java and lots of C programmers “main” is the name for a constructor function, but I like PHP’s __construct() function as the preferred name since it is pretty self-describing. “Main” is a terrible name because the real main is in the program made up of interacting classes.

In both cases, the warning about minimizing the work of the constructor function is to focus on true object oriented applications where you need objects talking to one another. Think of this as a series of requests where a group of people are all cooperatively working together, each from a separate (encapsulated) cubicle, to accomplish a task. By having the constructor function do very little, you’re forcing yourself (as a programmer) to use collaborative classes. Play the example and download the code to get started:
PlayDownload

A General Model for PHP OOP

As a nice simple starting place for PHP OOP, I’ve borrowed from the ASP.NET/C# relationship. ASP.NET provides the forms and UI, and C# is the engine. As an OOP jump-off point, we can substitute HTML for ASP.NET and PHP for C#. The Client class is the “requester” class. The UI (HTML) sends a request to the Client, and the Client farms out the request to the appropriate class. Figure 2 shows this simple relationship.

Figure 1: A Simple OOP PHP Model

Figure 1: A Simple OOP PHP Model

If you stop and think about it, OOP is simply a way to divide up a request into different specializations.

Avoid Conditional Statements if Possible

Figure 2: Requests begins with a UI built in HTML

Figure 2: Requests begins with a UI built in HTML

If you avoid conditional statements, and this includes switch statements, I think you can become a lot better programmer. In the example I built for this post, the user chooses from two different types of requests (classes), and each request has a refined request (method) that provides either of two different kinds of math calculations or display options. Figure 2 shows the UI (HTML) for the example. If the user selects “Do a Calculation” it sends the request to the Calculate class, but if the user selects “Display a story”, the request is handled by the Display class. Further, not only must the right class be selected, the right method in that class must be selected as well. The obvious answer is to get information from the UI and using a switch or set of conditional statements work out in the Client how to handle each request. You could even use (shudder) nested conditional statements. That approach could work, but when you start piling up conditional statements, you’re more likely to introduce errors, and when you make changes, you’re even more likely to make errors. The only good thing about conditionals is that you don’t have to tax your brain to use them.

Suppose for a second that all of your conditional statements were taken away. How, using the information sent from the HTML UI to the Client class can the selections be made without conditional statements? (Think about this for a moment.)

Think, pensez, pense, думайте, piense, 생각하십시오, denken Sie, 考えなさい, pensi, 认为, σκεφτείτε, , denk

Like all things that seem complex, the solution is pretty simple. (Aren’t they all once you know the answer.) Both classes were given the value of their class name in their respective radio button input tags. Likewise, the methods were given the value of their method names. With two radio button sets (request and method), only two values would be passed to the Client class. So all the Client had to do was to use the request string as a class name to instantiate an instance of the class, and employ the following built-in function:

call_user_func(array(object, method));

That generates a request like the following:

$myObject->myMethod;

In other words, it acts just like any other request for a class method. By coordinating the Client with the HTML UI, that was possible without using a single conditional statement. In this next section, we’ll now look at the code.
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PHP Game Coding: SVG Movement

Published on December 17, 2013 by Bill Sanders in OOP Game Coding and Raspberry PI. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

flashEncapsulating Movement

Any sane person would abandon PHP for JavaScript, Ajax, jQuery or some other client-side language that would work directly with Web-based SVG graphic elements and attributes. In doing so, though, it would give up on both the OOP capacity of PHP (lacking in these other languages) and low cost (no open socket server) inter-internet games (i.e., remote multiplayer games.)

Ironically (for some), the easiest part of creating action games is the game physics. You just need to take a formula from physics (e.g., deceleration, acceleration) and turn it into an algorithm. Eventually, we’ll get to that luxury, but first we need to work out the mechanics of changing the position of a SVG graphic on a grid. Before getting into that discussion, click the Play button to see the end results (goal) and the Download button to see the code:
PlayDownload

As you will see, there’s not a lot to play with, but it does deal with two velocity issues; velocity itself and capacity. It’s like comparing the velocity of a 2014 Rolls-Royce Wraith with that of a 1988 Trabant 601. Both cars can attain speeds of 100 km/hr (62 mph), but the Wraith can do it much faster and go far above that speed because it has a more powerful engine. It has greater capacity.

The Space Grid

In the previous post on using SVG graphics in making games, you can see the grid setup, and in that grid you can determine distance and collision using simple geometry. If you’ve spend any time with SVG graphics, you will find a animation system to move graphics along paths. The problem with that system (for now at least) is working out position and collision detection. Movement along paths has grid-like parameters in defining X and Y locations on a grid, but paths can also be defined in terms of curves, and knowing the position of an object at any given time can be problematic. Further, movement is a function of timing using the SVG animateMotion element. For example, consider the following path:

animateMotion fill=”freeze” path=”M 0 0 L 100 150″ dur=”.5s”

It moves an SVG object from 0,0 to 100,150 in a half a second (0.5 seconds). There is no checking along the way for collision. Using a Bézier curve the following movement goes from 0,0 to 300,0 in two seconds (2s) but it curves downward before reaching its destination.

animateMotion fill=”freeze” path=”M 0 0 T 100 150 T 300 0″ dur=”2s”

Again, what it may have collided with is unknown given both the timing of the motion and the curve. This is not to say that every point could not somehow be tracked, but at this point I’d rather take a more familiar route to movement and collision detection.

Moving SVG objects involves changing their X and Y values. I’m calling the frequency with which the X and Y values are updated, “capacity” and the amount of change “velocity.” Rather than using the animateMotion SVG element, this example changes the object’s X value through timed updates and variable values in the number of pixels each timed update generates. For example, an update of every 50 milliseconds is faster than one of every 100 milliseconds—there’s less time between each update pause. Likewise, an X increment of 10 pixels will cause faster movement than an update of 5 pixels.

A timed loop fires a function that changes the ship’s position:

?View Code JAVASCRIPT 
function moveShip()
{
     // Change the ship's position
     shipX += $this->velocity;
     shipX = shipX % 500;
     oopz.setAttribute("x", shipX);
}

As you can see the code is JavaScript using a PHP variable ($this->velocity) to set the speed. I would have preferred to do it using all PHP, but needed to use the JavaScript setAttribute method for moving the ship’s X position without having to create a new object. Changing the speed using capacity (loop timing) and velocity (amount of variable increment) requires PHP to create another SVG object, and for demonstration purposes, that’s fine. In an action game, though, it’d eat up a lot of resources.

The “ship” (rectangle) only moves from left to right at this time, and when it leaves “the galaxy” it loops around and comes in the other end. Using the modulus of 500 (% 500), the value will always be calculated correctly when moving from left to right (in both JavaScript and PHP); however, moving from right to left, as soon as the X position is 0, it fails. (See this post on game algorithms for a detailed explanation and comparison of how the modulus operator works differently in Python than PHP and JavaScript). It’s an easy fix using conditional statements, but that’s so…I don’t know…inelegant? See what you can do. For now, continue on to see how the Move class is created and used.
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PHP OOP Game Coding: Collision Detection

Published on December 9, 2013 by Bill Sanders in Beginning PHP OOP, Introduction to Design Patterns, Loose Coupling, OOP Game Coding and Raspberry PI. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

ropeDistance in 2D Space

For a number of years I’ve had David Bourg’s book, Physics for Game Developers (2002, O’Reilly), and I’ve been meaning to translate a set of formulas into OOP classes that could be used as part of a PHP game development library. After spending time on (simple) game development last summer using Python, I decided it was time to get busy with a similar project using more OOP and PHP. I wanted something that was small enough to run on Raspberry Pi computers, but still an animated video game.

On previous posts on this blog I’ve used SVG graphics with PHP, but the examples I used were fairly static. Here I’d like to try them in a more dynamic role to see if PHP could generate code to make them dance. For starters I thought that a simple 2D space game would be appropriate — more on the order of Astroids than Space Aliens.

2D Outer Space on a Grid: Plane Geometry

In order to get anywhere, I decided that the universe (galaxy, solar system, whatever; you choose) would live on a 500 x 400 grid. It can be adjusted for different screens, but the first step is to set up a common grid for clear discussion. Further, I thought that starting with rectangles as ‘space ships’ would make everything else easier. (You can build something more elaborate later in the series.) The two space crafts are Oopz and Titeaz. Oopz is crewed by OOP developers, and Titeaz has a crew of sequential and procedural programmers who keep getting in trouble because of spaghetti knots and tight bindings. The Oopz goes on rescue missions to send them PHP code packages of classes and design patterns. Figure 1 shows the initial positions of the two ships:

Figure 1: Grid with Oopz and Titeaz

Figure 1: Grid with Oopz and Titeaz


Each of the grid squares in Figure 1 is 50 x 50 pixels, and the space ships use conventional a x|y position denotation.

Determining Distance and Collision Detection

The first thing we’ll tackle in Rocket Science 101 is determining the distance between two objects.

Raspberry Pi Users: You will need the Chromium browser for the graphics in this series. You can download it using the following code:
sudo apt-get install chromium

The distance between objects can be used for everything from determining when two objects have collided (distance = 0 + fudge-factor) to when another ship is in rescue range to receive project-saving OOP code. The SVG objects on your screen (without the grid) can be seen in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Determining Distance

Figure 2: Determining Distance

The code for this starting screen is based on the SVG W3 standards and saved as an XML file:

?View Code XML 
< ?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
< !DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd"> 
 width="500" height="400" viewBox="0 0 500 400"
     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1">
>Oopz and Titaz>

 x="0" y="0" width="500" height="400"
        fill="#DCDCDC" stroke="blue" stroke-width="1">>

 x="100" y="100" width="30" height="20"
        fill="#cf5300" stroke="#369" stroke-width=".4">>

 x="300" y="200" width="30" height="20"
        fill="#369" stroke="#00cc00" stroke-width=".4">>
>

To see the distance calculation, click the Play button. See if you can figure out what formula is used before you look at the code:

PlayDownload

The calculations are based on one of the most fundamental theorems in plane geometry. Before continuing, see if you can figure it out and resolve the solution.
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Basic PHP-MySql OOP

Published on November 27, 2013 by Bill Sanders in Beginning PHP OOP, Introduction to Design Patterns, MySql Connection, MySql Operation, OOP and Design Pattern Principles and Raspberry PI. 30 Comments Tags: , , .

basicMySQLGetting the Basic with PHP-MySql

Design Patterns are general OOP solutions for any computer language, and yet each language has different typical uses. One of the most important uses of PHP is to communicate with MySql. As the “middleman” between HTML and MySql, developers need to juggle three languages well in the HTML< ->PHP< ->MySql sequence and shuffle. All of the OOP work, though, belongs to PHP since neither HTML nor MySql is object oriented. This post is dedicated to the fundamental OOP questions surrounding HTML< ->PHP connections, instantiating class instances and creating re-usable MySql classes. I’d also like to touch on using comments in code and perhaps stir up a little controversy with comments about certain “standards” for comments in PHP.

The first thing to do is to take the program for test drive and look at the code. Run the program by clicking the Play button and click the Download button to get the files.
PlayDownload

The HTML Communication

Object oriented programming is all about objects communicating with one another. The first communication is between HTML and the PHP object it first calls. As the user interface (UI), the HTML document must get data from the user and pass it to PHP for processing. In PHP object communication, each object can call the object as a whole or specify a method or property in the other object to perform a specific task. With HTML, we pretty much have to be satisfied with a call to an object (or object trigger) and depend on PHP to carry the ball from that point on. However, if an HTML document has several forms, each form can call a different object, or each form submit button can have a different name. By using the unique name for each submit button a single Client class can determine which operation the user requests. The following HTML is set up for that purpose:

?View Code HTML 
< !doctype html>




Basics of PHP OOP


snap


  
Basic Classes for Basic Tasks I

  Keeping objects clear and focused on a single task



  
Entering Data into a Table and Retrieving it




Data are entered into a table through a UI, but automatically generated data also may be entered.





  
Developer Info:

    
    
    

    
    
    

  

  
Programming Language Used Most

    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    
  

  

  

    
  






Display All Data in Table with a new Form
  

  

    
  





The PHP class uses 4 MySql fields to store and retrieve the information:

    
  
  • id
    • 
  
  • name
    • 
  
  • email
    • 
  
  • lang
    •

You may also want to take a quick look at the CSS file that goes with the HTML.

?View Code CSS 
@charset "UTF-8";
/* CSS Document */
/*66635D (gray)  E54140 (red) F7EBD5 (cream) 6CC5C1 (aqua) 000000 (black)   */
body
{
    background-color: #F7EBD5;
    font-family: sans-serif;
    color: #66635D;
}
a
{
    color: #E54140;
    text-decoration: none;
    font-weight: bold;
}
 
.warning
{
    color: #E54140;
    font-weight: bold;
}
 
h1
{
    font-family: "Arial Black", Verdana, Helvetical,sans-serif;
     background-color: #6CC5C1 ;
     color: #E54140;
     text-align: center;
}
header
{
    background-color: #E54140;
     color: #E54140;
     padding:1em;
     color: #F7EBD5;
     text-align: center;
}
 
.fl
{
    float: left;
}
 
div
{
    padding-left: 1em;
}
h2
{
    color: #000000;
}
 
li
{
    font-weight: bold;
}
iframe
{
    background-color:#6CC5C1;
}

One thing that may stir the pot (among developers) found in the HTML document is the use of iframe tags. HTML5 retained iframes, and in the jQuery Mobile documentation, you will find the use of iframes. They no longer present a hazard to SEOs; and so I don’t see the harm using them to display PHP output. Besides, I could not find a suitable replacement. (I’m not about to mix PHP and HTML to create a workable hack straight out of the 9th circle of Hell.) So see if you can live with iframes for now, and we’ll get smelling salts for the fainters.

The Client Sorts it Out

When the UI has many options that must be handled by a client object to make the appropriate request from a collection of objects, each with a single responsibility, there’s going to be some kind of conditional statement to sort out which object to use. For lots of good reasons that I won’t go into here, switch/case and if/ifelse statements are to be used sparingly and judiciously in OOP and design pattern programming. An alternative approach would be to add several methods to the Client class and then have individual trigger files launched from the different forms in the HTML document call the appropriate Client method. That’s messy, but because HTML cannot address a class method, that may actually be a more orthodox approach. (Keep those smelling salts handy.)

The basic logic of the approach used is this:

  • When a submit button is pressed it can be trapped by the isset() method
  • Provide a name for each submit button
  • Test for variable being set and not NULL
  • Once tested use unset() to remove set state
  • Call object of set variable

Now take a look at the Client class to see how that reasoning has been implemented:

?View Code PHP 
< ?php
ERROR_REPORTING( E_ALL | E_STRICT );
ini_set("display_errors", 1);
function __autoload($class_name) 
{
    include $class_name . '.php';
}
class Client
{
        //Variable to select the correct class
        private $task;
 
        //Which submit button used?
        public function __construct()
        {
            if(isset($_POST['insert']))
            {
                unset($_POST['insert']);
                $this->task= new DataEntry();   
            }
            elseif(isset($_POST['all']))
            {
                unset($_POST['all']);
                $this->task= new DataDisplay();
            } 
            elseif(isset($_POST['update']))
            {
                unset($_POST['update']);
                $this->task= new DataUpdate();
            }
            elseif(isset($_POST['kill']))
            {
                unset($_POST['kill']);
                $this->task= new DeleteRecord();
            } 
        }     
}
$worker = new Client();
?>

The Client has four operations reflecting the four classes:

  1. DataEntry()
  2. DataDisplay()
  3. DataUpdate()
  4. DeleteRecord()

That’s all there is to the communication between HTML and the PHP Client class. The Client works (as do all client classes) to make requests. The origin of the request is the user through the HTML UI.
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PHP Game Making Part II: The State Machine

Published on August 12, 2013 by Bill Sanders in Loose Coupling, OOP and Design Pattern Principles and State. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

stateObey the State!

When you hear the term State Machine, you may think of totalitarian societies as depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 run by ruthless dictators. However, in programming, state machines are quite benign and helpful in solving certain kinds of programming problems. Chapter 10 of Learning PHP Design Patterns, explains the State design pattern in full detail. In this post I want to introduce the concept of a state machine, but we will not see a true State design pattern just yet. Here, we’ll just look at a state machine and how it can be used in OOP programming in general. As you will see, we can use a state machine in standard OOP programming without a full State design pattern. In Part III, we’ll examine a full State Design Pattern.

Generally speaking in programming, a state is the current value of a variable. A state machine (or finite state machine) is a system where each state waits for a transition to another state. (In Learning PHP Design Patterns, I used the example of a light having states of “on” or “off,” with the transition through the trigger of a light switch.) In the game of Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock (R-P-S-L-S), each of the five gestures represents a state, and the transition occurs each time the players throw a gesture. (See PHP Game Making Part I.) To get started, play the revised version of the game and download the files for the State Machine version of the game:
PlayDownload

A State Class

To get started, begin with an interface that encompasses all of the different states (moves) in R-P-S-L-S. The following listing, IPlayer, has methods for each move:

?View Code PHP 
< ?php
interface IPlayer
{
    public function rockMove();
    public function spockMove();
    public function paperMove();
    public function lizardMove();
    public function scissorsMove();
}
?>

Note that all of the methods are public. This allows access to them through different implementations.

What we want to do with each method is to generate outcomes for all possible moves. Given that a player (human) is pitted against a computer that randomly makes moves, each state class with have outcomes for each of the methods based on the combination of what the player has done and what the computer will do. Take, for example, the Rock class. Each of the

?View Code PHP 
< ?php
class Rock implements IPlayer
{
    public function rockMove()
    {
        return "Tie";
    }
 
    public function spockMove()
    {
        return "Computer wins!";
    }
 
    public function paperMove()
    {
        return "Computer wins!";
    }
 
    public function lizardMove()
    {
        return "Player wins!";
    }
 
    public function scissorsMove()
    {
        return "Player wins!";
    }  
}
?>

Essentially, you have self-aware state classes. For example, the Rock class is aware that if the opposition makes a Rock move, the result is a tie. Likewise, if the opposition chooses either a Lizard or Scissors move, Rock wins; but if the opposition makes either Paper or Spock moves, Rock loses. There are no conditional statements. That’s important as you will see when we move on the the State design pattern in Part III (or you saw in Chapter 10 of Learning PHP Design Patterns.

The State Machine

To understand a State Machine, it helps to use a statechart. A statechart identifies the different states in a system and the triggers that transition from one state to another. In the case of an R-P-S-L-S) finite state system, you have a triggering state (chant->throw) and the five individual states. Figure 1 shows the five states and the triggering state. Note that all changes from one state to another go through the trigger and none directly to another. (e.g., A Lizard state cannot go directly to a Paper state; it must go through the trigger.)

Figure 1: Statechart of the RPSLS State Machine

Figure 1: Statechart of the RPSLS State Machine

Importantly, the State Machine represents what actually happens in a game of R-P-S-L-S. Players enter the “chant” trigger and then throw a gesture. So we may actually refer to the RPSLS as a “state” used to transition between the five outcome states. The task now, is to implement these states. (Click below to continue.)
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