[news.eclipse.tools.pdt] Re: inheritance, fluent interfaces, and code co

["Michael Spector" <michael@xxxxxxxx>]

Is setRole() declared as abstract method in your Article class ?

"Geraint Howell" <G.S.J.Howell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:gig7dl$ugu$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi.
>
> I have an abstract base class called Article.  It has a mutator like this:
>
>  /**
>   * Set the Title of the Article
>   *
>   * @param string $title
>   * @return Article
>   */
>  public function setTitle($title = null)
>  {
>    if (! is_string($title))
>      throw new Exception('Invalid title');
>    $this->title = $title;
>    return $this;
>  }
>
> I have a concrete sub class called News Article.  It has a mutator like
> this:
>
>  /**
>   * Sets the Role that is permitted to view this article
>   *
>   * @param string $role
>   * @return NewsArticle
>   */
>  public function setRole($role = null)
>  {
>    if (! is_string($role))
>      throw new Exception(sprintf("Invalid role: '%s'", $role));
>    $this->role = $role;
>    return $this;
>  }
>
> This fluent interface allows me to write code like this:
>
> $article = new NewsArticle();
> $article
>  ->setRole('public')
>  ->setTitle('Foo Bar');
>
> PDT gives me nice code completion for this.
>
> However, code completion breaks when I use methods from the abstract class
> (even though the code works just fine):
>
> $article
>  ->setTitle('Foo Bar')
>  ->setRole('public');  // no code completion here
>
> I guess this is because setTitle has @return Article in the doc block.
>
> I could change it to @return Article|NewsArticle, but this feels wrong,
> since the base class shouldn't know anything about classes that derive 
> from
> it.
>
> Is there a better way to do it?
>
>