Re: [fw-mvc] Another Model Design Thread

Hi

When i started with ZF i was tempted to follow the Zend_Db_Table inheritance to build my model, and i quickly realized that this approach was wrong.

I will show my actual way of work: "Beans":

Take as example, the "Product" Bean, with only getters and setters methods, with one field for each database field. We can have extra bean fields if we need them (calculated, flags, etc..).

We can have a "Product" Table class, but this class only knows to load and save arrays of data.

The "Product" Model class is the responsible of fetching the Bean, filling Beans from arrays and doing extra methods (like retrieve the product's manufacturer).

So, if i want to get a Product with id 50, this will be the steps.

Inside Controller:

$mProduct = new Product_Model();
$product    = $mProduct->fetch(50);

Inside Model:

public function fetch($id)
{
    $tProduct = new Product_Table();
    $rProduct = $tProduct->fetchAll("id = $id")->current()->toArray();

    return self::fillBean($rProduct);
}

public static function fillBean(array $data)
{
     $product = new Product_Bean();
     $product->id = $data['id'];
     $product->name = $data['name'];
     ....
     return $product;
}

Ok, this is so simple you can say this operation could be done with Zend_Db_Table, but when the complexity arises is when the Bean has relations (A Product bean could have a variable that stores a Manufacturer Bean (loaded with lazy loading...)), or the "save" method from model needs to do some different operations (save a product, update the log, check stocks, etc.).

Ah, and don't forget database transactions. Where will you put the begin and commit? These must be put at the very beginning and end of the model operation, because it's not Zend_Db_Table responsability.

These are my 0.05...

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 7:58 AM, webPragmatist <chris@webpragmatist.com> wrote:

*GULP*

Hey Matthew,
Can you just elaborate on this?

Matthew Weier O'Phinney-3 wrote:
>
> Now, all that aside... you can do all of this using Zend_Db_Table as
> your base model as well. I choose not to, but I totally understand your
> arguments.

Do you simply use the objects inside of your model?
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