Can Data Objects Be Created From Another Class?

[DeX]

I'm not sure if I phrased that question properly but I'll give an example:

I have a User class and I have a Car class. I have users on a website and they own cars. So if I want to get all users from the database, I use the User class to do that fetch and the same if I want to get all cars from the database. My question is when I want to get all cars owned by a specific person. Should I do something this?

$user = new User(123);

$carsOwnedByUser = $user->getCars();

 

Or should I do something like this?

$carsOwnedByUser = \CarNameSpace\getCars(123);

 

In the first one I have a function in the User class to get all of their cars and in the second one I have a function in the Car class that gets cars when you pass in a user ID. Is one more proper than the other? Each one will return an array of Car objects. Thanks a lot.

[requinix]

If you're going with an OOP model (and that's a completely separate discussion) then you should continue with it.

Typically the Car class will handle any type of search against its data, meaning that there would be a method like Car::getByUser(user id). In addition to that, you can provide a shorthand from the User class to find that - namely, $user->getCars() that obviously can supply the user ID to getByUser automatically.