PHP Constants: Advantages/Disadvantages

Question

Lately I've been in the habit of assigning integer values to constants and simply using the constant name as a means of identifying its purpose. However, in some cases this has resulted in the need to write a function like typeToString($const) when a string representation is needed. Obviously this is inefficient and unneccesary, but is only an issue every once and a while.

So my question is, are there any other tradeoffs I should consider? Which case is considered to be cleaner/more standards-compliant? Also, is the performance difference negligable for most cases?

Case 1: (faster when a string version is not needed?)

class Foo {
    const USER_TYPE_ADMIN = 0;
    const USER_TYPE_USER = 1;
    const USER_TYPE_GUEST = 2;

    public $userType = self::USER_TYPE_ADMIN;

    public function __construct($type) {
        $this->userType = $type;
    }

    public function typeToString() {
        switch($this->userType) {
            case self::USER_TYPE_ADMIN:
                return 'admin';
                break;

            case self::USER_TYPE_USER:
                return 'user';
                break;

            case self::USER_TYPE_GUEST:
                return 'guest';
                break;

            default:
                return 'unknown';
                break;
        }
    }
}

$foo = new Foo(Foo::USER_TYPE_GUEST);
echo $foo->typeToString();
// Displays "guest"

Case 2:(faster/easier when a string version is needed)

class Foo {
    const USER_TYPE_ADMIN = 'admin';
    const USER_TYPE_USER = 'user';
    const USER_TYPE_GUEST = 'guest';

    public $userType = self::USER_TYPE_ADMIN;

    public function __construct($type) {
        $this->userType = $type;
    }
}

$foo = new Foo(Foo::USER_TYPE_GUEST);
echo $foo->userType();
// Displays "guest"

Answer 1

The performance difference will be negligible unless you're storing a lot of them. I'd write the toString() method more concisely:

$strings = array
(
    self::USER_TYPE_ADMIN => 'admin',
    self::USER_TYPE_USER => 'user',
);

if (!isset($strings[$type]))
    return 'unknown';

return $strings[$type];

Also, you could make the $strings array a static.