PHP 5 DOM and exposing properties

[Michaelp]

Hello!

Seems that PHP gets more and more object oriented, which is good.

I am now running a course in PHP, using PHP 5, where we are going to
use the DOM interface. I am trying to teach them good OO practices,
meaning that we insistently hide properties and expose them as get or
set methods.

Looking at the PHPs DOM implementation, I see that many of the
properties are exposed directly, without even offering get methods.

1. Is there something I am misunderstanding orotherwise missing? (I
havenot used DOM in PHP before).

2.This poses a pedagogical problem for me as a teacher. How do I
explain this contradiction to my students?

Thanks

Michael