在一些其他函数中包装全局对象的访问器方法

Question

I do a lot of stuff specifically with PHP and WordPress, and I've come across this concept quite often throughout the WordPress application; although, this question isn't specific to WordPress. I'll demonstrate with an example.

Say there is some global object of a class.

global $foo;
$foo = new Foo();

And then this class has some sort of accessor method that could be used with our global object.

global $foo;
$bar = $foo->get_bar();

Well, often I see this wrapped in a general function that takes care of tapping into the object's method, essentially hiding that part of it, making it more simple to access that item.

function wp_get_bar() {
    global $foo;
    return $foo->get_bar();
}

And so a developer using the application could just do this where ever they wanted without knowing about the $foo global object specifically:

$bar = wp_get_bar();

I'm just curious if this is a general computer science concept? If so, is there a name for it? Or is this something I can read more about somewhere?

Answer 1

When Wordpress was created, OOP wasn't very popular. In fact, OOP became more serious with PHP5, and Wordpress started with... PHP3?

In addition, I think that to make it easy for newbie users, Wordpress developers opted using procedural functions instead of objects and classes. It's simpler if you don't have a deep knowledge of WP core.

I don't think this has an specific name.