Why is Duration no longer final ?

[nyamsprod]

@jeromegamez nice package why is the Duration class no longer final ? Seems to me that it is a Value Object and therefore should be final 🤔

[jeromegamez]

That's a good question that I've asked myself as well.

In 1.x the class was final, but extensible through the spatie/macroable package, in case somebody would want to extend the class, e.g. with inDays(), inMinutes() or similar helper functions that I perhaps would not be willing to implement in the basse class. After releasing it, it felt wrong to me - having a final class that's still open for extension through "cheating" :).

So I decided to see the Duration class within the package more as an open utility class than a strict value object. In a project that uses the class, a developer can for example to something like this

<?php

namespace App;

use Gamez\Duration;

final class Duration extends \Gamez\Duration
{
    public function inMinutes(): int
    {
        $now = new DateTimeImmutable();
        $then = $now->add($this->toDateInterval());

        $durationInSeconds = $now->diff($then, true);

        return intdiv($durationInSeconds, 60);
    }
}

I am planning to add more features to the class (perhaps even those helper methods), and as soon as I think that the class is feature complete, I will make it final again and create a new major release.

I hope this makes sense and answers your question.

[nyamsprod]

Making your class final will help you down the road when adding new functionalities that requires messing up your internal code. Currently any changes to your internal code is potentially a BC break because the class is not final. This was discuss in length in a specific issue of League\Period before v4 release

Also another proof is because I made Period final I was able to add full boundary type support without any BC break 😄 because the internal was heavily rewrote. Otherwise I would have add multiple method marked as deprecated left because I would have potentially broke the code of someone using them via extension.

TL;DR: You should favor composition over inheritance and make your class final.

My 2 cents

[jeromegamez]

You're right. Well then, that will be a fast iteration to a 3.x release :D. Thank you for your input!