Should my PHP functions accept an array of argumen

Question

In a PHP web application I'm working on, I see functions defined in two possible ways.

Approach 1:

function myfunc($arg1, $arg2, $arg3)

Approach 2:

// where $array_params has the structure array('arg1'=>$val1, 'arg2'=>$val2, 'arg3'=>$val3)
function myfunc($array_params)

When should I use one approach over another? It seems that if system requirements keep changing, and therefore the number of arguments for myfunc keep changing, approach 1 may require a lot of maintenance.

Answer 1

There are pros and cons to each way.

• If it's a simple function that is unlikely to change, and only has a few arguments, then I would state them explicitly.

• If the function has a large number of arguments, or is likely to change a lot in the future, then I would pass an array of arguments with keys, and use that. This also becomes helpful if you have function where you only need to pass some of the arguments often.

An example of when I would choose an array over arguments, for an example, would be if I had a function that created a form field. possible arguments I may want:

• Type
• Value
• class
• ID
• style
• options
• is_required

and I may only need to pass a few of these. for example, if a field is type = text, I don't need options. I may not always need a class or a default value. This way It is easier to pass in several combinations of arguments, without having a function signature with a ton arguments and passing null all the time. Also, when HTML 5 becomes standard many many years from now, I may want to add additional possible arguments, such as turning auto-complete on or off.