Retrieving user details from a custom form
First, I would apply self-encapsulation by changing:

$this-&gt;_salutation = $this-&gt;getRequest()-&gt;getPost('salutation');


to:

$this-&gt;set_salutation( $this-&gt;get_parameter( "salutation" ) );


Since PHP can call functions using a string, it can be simplified further:

function set( $p ) {
  $f = '$this-&gt;set_' . $p;
  $f( $this-&gt;get_parameter( $p ) );
}

function get_parameter( $p ) {
  return $this-&gt;get_request()-&gt;get_post( $p );
}


Then:

$this-&gt;set( "salutation" );
$this-&gt;set( "first_name" );
$this-&gt;set( "last_name" );
$this-&gt;set( "email" );
// ... etc.


You can take that one step further by iterating over all HTML FORM variables, which removes the repetition altogether:

foreach( $this-&gt;get_form_parameters() as $param_name =&gt; $param_value ) {
  $this-&gt;set( $param_name );
}


However, that could lead to attempts on making arbitrary function calls by the client, so you'd have to be careful.

What I like about removing the repetition is that it sparks of being consistent with the DRY principle. The HTML form has the list of variables that need to be set -- now the developer need only change the HTML form variable list to change what variables are set by the object. This leads to a single source for the variable list.