Jaded PHP

Author: Josh Adell josh.adell@gmail.com
Copyright (c) 2011

Jaded is a library of stuff I have created for my own projects. It started life as a complete MVC framework, but I wasn't happy with the controllers or views. Now, it is a simple, lightweight model layer. It also has a pretty decent Autoloader, and a stub Service class.

Over time, I will also be adding other classes I tend to use over and over again, including some Zend plugins.

Usage

There's a pretty good post at http://joshadell.com/2010/11/models-can-be-so-jaded.html explaining how to use the model library.

The basic idea is that models have three parts:

• a definition (what the model is)
• a store (how the model persists its data)
• a container tying the store and definition together for a single object.

The container and definition don't actually care how the store works (database, csv file, RSS feed, etc.) The store can actually be swapped out of a model at runtime to facilitate migrations from one storage medium to another, reading from one place and writing to a second, or any other reason your application calls for.

Here's a quick example of a model that uses the DB connector and store included with Jaded:

class UserDefinition extends Jaded_Model_Definition
{
    /**
     * Maps a name that calling code can use to an internal field name
     */
    protected $aFieldMap = array(
        "userid"   => "userid",
        "username" => "username",
        "password" => "password",
    );

    /**
     * The key fields for this model
     */
    protected $aKeyFields = array(
        "userid" => "auto"
    );
}

class UserStore extends Jaded_Model_Store_Database
{
    protected $sTable = "users";

    /**
     * This bit is simply the connection name used by Jaded's database wrapper
     */
    protected $sDbId = "project_database";
}

class User extends Jaded_Model
{
    protected $sDefaultDefinition = "UserDefinition";
    protected $sDefaultStore      = "UserStore";
}

Here is how to persist the model in the data store and load it out again:

$oUser = new User();
echo $oUser->getUsername();  // prints ""

$oUser->setUsername("bobuser");
$oUser->create();
$iUserId = $oUser->getUserId();

$oUser2 = new User();
$oUser2->setUserId($iUserId);
$oUser2->load();
echo $oUser2->getUsername();  // prints "bobuser"

Models also have update and delete methods, rounding out the CRUD functionality.

Other helpful advice:

• Put any data access code in the store class (UserStore in the example above.) If the method returns multiple rows, wrap each row in a model and return an array of them.
• Code that is specific to a model, but not data access should go in the container class (User in the example above.) For instance, if there were a method to hash a user's password before storing it, it would go in the User class. UserStore would only have to worry about storing the hashed string.
• More than one key field can be defined in the model definition. Only one can be auto, the rest are key. All key field must be set before calling load.