[UPHPU] Fluent interfaces

[Richard K Miller]

Has everyone heard of a "fluent interface"? It's a term coined by  
Martin Fowler that I just learned today. (Wondering if I've been in  
the dark about this.)

Instead of returning null from your object setter methods, you return  
a pointer to the object itself. This allows you to chain together  
setter calls. For example, I saw this style when reading the  
documentation for a new version of PEAR Services_Yahoo, which returns  
search results from the Yahoo search engine:

$client = Services_Yahoo_Search::factory("web");
$results = $client->searchFor("Steve Fossett");

If you want more than 10 search results:
$results = $client->withResults(20)->searchFor("Steve Fossett");

If you want to start at the 90th result:
$results = $client->startingAt(90)->withResults(20)->searchFor("Steve  
Fossett");

If you want the results returned in XML:
$results = $client->withType('XML')->startingAt(90)->withResults(20)- 
 >searchFor("Steve Fossett");

Chaining together these options seems to make it pretty readable. Is  
anybody using this style?

Richard

Sources:
http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.webservices.services- 
yahoo.examples.php
http://www.mikenaberezny.com/archives/35
http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1362