new to oop: user management class - advice wanted

[wrathican]

hey guys im relativley new to oop.

i have read all three parts of the oop tutorials here on phpfreaks, a few times.

what i want is something to create to practice oop.

 

so i thought the best way would be to recreate something i already have in place, a user management system.

my system is all written proceduraly and it has most things i think a basic system need.

 

it already features user registration, activation, administration(deletion, activation, password change, promote, demote), user hierarchy, login, log out, password and profile management.

i use mysql databases to store the data.

 

so, i guess i would need a class to do the database stuff and a user class.

writing classes isnt that much different to just creating functions/methods. so i guess that would be easier than i thought.

 

what i see as my problem is using the classes to actually log users in and do all the stuff i would want them to do.

 

has anyone seen a tutorial on this subject in particular? or could offer me some advice?

 

thanks.

[DarkWater]

See, you wouldn't just use a database class and a user class....there's no way to implement code correctly with enough separation that way.  You'd probably need many classes for this.  First of all, for users, I'd probably make a few classes that all extend a User abstract class or an interface and all can be handled the same, but have different logic for figuring things out, i.e admins, users, mods, etc, then a factory method for getting the correct object based on certain criteria (a level indicator in the database, maybe).  But that's just how I'd probably do it.