Scaling inserting related optional objects to your collection

Question

In PHP, you can have a collection as an array as a class property. This collection can have a function add that takes multiple (type-hinted) parameters, as such: add( Markup $markup, Style $style = Null), the keyword here is Null, the system tells you that "hey, you don't have to add this, but you can do it, but it has to be of type Style)" and adds a package to that internal array:

public function add( $name, Markup $markup, Style $style = Null )
{
 $this->packages[$name]['markup'] = $markup;
 if( $style ) {
 $this->packages[$name]['style'] = $style;
 }
}

Which means that 100% a package has a markup object, but it can have a style as well.

Thing is - watch what happens when, by good intentions, I just wanna have things separated such that my interfaces aren't cluttered:

public function add( $name, Markup $markup, Style $style = Null, Categorized $categories, .. )
{
 $this->packages[$name]['markup'] = $markup;
 if( $style ) {
 $this->packages[$name]['style] = $style;
 }
 if( $categories ) {
 $this->packages[$name]['categories'] = $categories;
 }
 //.. and so on, gets cluttered.
}

This ramps up to be Satan-level hectic to maintain.

What is a solution to this?

• Ewan: doesnt this overwrite the contents of packages[$name]?
• Daniel M: Fixed. Adds to the package.
• Ewan: surely you should add a null style if not supplied in order to maintain the overall class
• Daniel M: @Ewan Right, but the question is how do I do this at scale? I'll end up with a lot of parameters and a lot of checks.
• Ewan: why check at all, just add null

Answer 1

Its unclear to me exactly what you are trying to do. I would have this:

public function add(Package $p)
{
 $this->packages[$p.name] = $p;
}
class Package
{
 public $Name
 public $Style 
 public $Categorized 
}