Attributes : private to protected

[JulienOrain]

Hi everyone,
I am wondering why all attributes are private.
Does it make sense for you to upgrade them to protected in order to use them in herited classes ?
Thanks !
Julien

[caarlos0]

Which class, exactly?

[JulienOrain]

Most of "*Base" classes possess private attributes.
Usually I can easily handle it with getters/setters, even if I found more logical to use protected attributes in heritable classes.
For my case, I am unable to use private fields from the DateTimeBoxBase class. (autoclose for example do not provide getter)
So I am unable to override the configure() method. An way to fix that is either to give accessors for all attributes or to upgrade attributes visibility.
Is that make sense for you ?

[reinert]

It's not a good practice use protected fields.

It's often better keep fields private and analyze whether they should be exposed using a protected or public getter.