php data classes?

Question

I've learned most of my OOP practices from C#, and coded php primarily in MVC but without custom objects for data types (user information and such I primarily stored in associative arrays). I'm wanting to take what I've learned in C# (making structs, or data classes basically, to store specific types of data, such as a user record, or say an article's information) into php. This is so I can know exactly what data values to expect (because they're defined fields, instead of just added to an array), allowing a bit more abstraction between controller and view.

Is there a certain way to do this in php, and in the MVC design pattern specifically? I am curious where I should put the definitions of these new "data types."
Or am I just thinking about this in the wrong way, and there is a better way to do it?

EDIT: A C# example of what I'm trying to accomplish:

class program1
{
    public void main ()
    {
        Article randomArticle = getArticle (); //instead of returning an object array, it returns a defined data type with predefined fields, so I don't need to guess what's there and what isn't
        Console.WriteLine(randomArticle.title);
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    public Article getArticle ()
    {
        return new Article("Sometitle", "SomeContent");
    }
}

struct Article
{
    public Title {get; private set;}
    public Content {get; private set;}

    public Article (string title, string content)
    {
        this.Title = title;
        this.Content = content;
    }
}

(idk if the above actually would compile, but it gives you the gist of what I'm attempting to do in PHP)

Answer 1

PHP is free of any logic you would like to implement. IMO, Ensuring data-types leads to a field of validations. I want you to check few terms, that will give you everything required.

1. Type Casting/ Juggling ^{[docs here]}

   Casting is probably fastest way to stop unwanted input. The casts allowed are:

   • (int), (integer) - cast to integer
   • (bool), (boolean) - cast to boolean
   • (float), (double), (real) - cast to float
   • (string) - cast to string
   • (array) - cast to array
   • (object) - cast to object
   • (unset) - cast to NULL (PHP 5)

2. PHP Filters

   PHP has a function filter_var (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.filter-var.php) will helps you to compare a data type

   var_dump(filter_var('[email protected]', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL));
   var_dump(filter_var('http://example.com', FILTER_VALIDATE_URL, FILTER_FLAG_PATH_REQUIRED));
   

3. PHP inbuild() functions

   They are many functions in php, which can help you check the data types

   • is_array(): checks array
   • is_integer(): Check integer
   • is_object(): Check objects
   • is_float(): Checks Floating point number
   • ctype_digit(): Checks Integer

   and many more

4. Regex Validation

   You will be able to find many resources on this on the internet.

---

Other Resources

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/sanitize-and-validate-data-with-php-filters/
• http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/PHP-Type-Casting.html

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Update

Your above method might turn into something like this

public function Article($title, $content) {
    if(is_string($title)) { $this -> title = $title; }
    if(is_string($content)) { $this -> content = $content; }
}