Hydrate timestamp fields to PEAR Date objects - php

Question

In my Symfony/Doctrine application, I would like any timestamp fields in my database to retreived as PEAR Date objects instead of date strings. e.g. If my schema is
SomeEvent:
columns:
id:
type: integer
primary: true
start: timestamp
end: timestamp
I would like to be able to run a Doctrine query to retrieve SomeEvent objects and have $anEvent->getStart() be a PEAR Date object. Right now Doctrine gives me strings for all timestamp fields which is basically useless. (I'd also like saving of Dates to work correctly.)
What's the best way to accomplish this?
I researched using a Hydration listener but it looks like I'd have to register that per table and hardcode the column names that I want to be converted. Using a custom Hydrator didn't look much better since then I lose the ability to use any of the other core hydration methods without having my dates be strings again.
EDIT: It looks like Doctrine 2 has a feature that's exactly what I'm looking for: Custom Mapping Types. Unfortunately this site is being deployed to a host that doesn't support PHP 5.3+ so Doctrine 2 is out. :(

Answer 1

I figured out a hacky way to do it that I'm not super happy with, but it works. I created the following 2 classes:
class DateClassBehavior extends Doctrine_Template {
public function setTableDefinition() {
$listener = new DateClassListener();
$table = $this->getTable();
foreach ($table->getColumns() as $columnName => $columnDef) {
if ($columnDef['type'] == 'timestamp') {
$listener->dateColumns[] = $columnName;
}
}
$this->addListener($listener);
}
}
class DateClassListener extends Doctrine_Record_Listener {
public $dateColumns = array();
public function postHydrate(Doctrine_Event $event) {
$data = $event->data;
foreach ($this->dateColumns as $col) {
$date = $data->$col == null ? null : new Date($data->$col);
$data->$col = null;
$data->$col = $date;
}
$event->data = $data;
}
}
And added DateClassBehavior to the definition for each table in my model:
SomeEvent:
actAs: [DateClassBehavior]
columns:
id:
type: integer
primary: true
start: timestamp
end: timestamp
This takes care of creating the Date objects when things are loaded. I also modified the actual PEAR Date class (I know... bad) and added a __toString() method that returns $this->getDate(). PHP then automatically converts the dates to the correct string when doctrine saves them.
If anyone finds a better way to do this please post it.