Is it somehow possible to automatically generate a YAML schema file or models from an existing MySQL database?
I need to create models for Doctrine but writing the model classes manually seems extremely boring to me. I already have MySQL database with tables and all relations so it would help me if there is some way to generate Doctrine models from it.
If you are using doctrine 2:
http://www.doctrine-project.org/docs/orm/2.0/en/reference/tools.html#reverse-engineering
Yes, it is possible ;-)
For Doctrine 1.2, take a look at the Command Line Interface : amongst other utilities, you have the possibity to generate the YAML files from an existing database.
And, for Doctrine 2.0, you'll want to take a look at Reverse Engineering
Related
...or I really need to create a class for each Table? then.. everytime i changes table structure i need to update the code..
You could use an ORM (Object-relational mapper) such as Eloquent, which is included in Laravel, and then just create an model (class) for each table in your database. Eloquent automatically maps each field into a PHP object. If you haven't ever used an ORM, I highly recommend you check out Laravel... it's what made me stick with PHP and I do almost all my projects using Laravel. Best of luck!
Adding to BakerStreet Response.
Eloquent fits your needs as the ORM itself will fetch all the columns you specify if you leave it as default. By default the drivers that it works with are: mysql, postgreSQL, and Sqlite.
Eloquent itself can be downloaded without Laravel being involved.
Please refer to Jeffrey Way's Laracast for instruction:
https://laracasts.com/lessons/how-to-use-eloquent-outside-of-laravel
...thanks all, ended up writting my own magic class:
DBIntrd - Simple PHP framework for SQLite3 databases
Tired of spending time writting a bunch of code to create PHP classes & methods for SQLite tables?
DBIntrd is magic way to dinamically instance objects and persists data at SQLite3 tables..
I have two tables in DB (topic, topic_content):
what kind of entities i should create for symfony2?
I think, i should have something like this in my symfony structure (Entities/Topic.php, Entities/Topic_content.php) help me please..
Yes, you would create Topic and Topic Content. And likely also a User Entity (because user_id looks like a foreign key).
However, the idea in Symfony2 is to approach the application from the Model site instead of the database site. Quoting https://doctrine-orm.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tutorials/getting-started-database.html:
Development Workflows
When you Code First, you start with developing Objects and then map them onto your database. When you Model First, you are modelling your application using tools (for example UML) and generate database schema and PHP code from this model. When you have a Database First, you already have a database schema and generate the corresponding PHP code from it.
For database first, there is a generator that will derive objects based on your schema:
https://github.com/beberlei/DoctrineCodeGenerator
The recommended approach though is to have Doctrine generate the db schema from your Entities.
Quoting Getting Started - Generating the DB Schema
Doctrine has a Command-Line Interface that allows you to access the SchemaTool, a component that generates the required tables to work with the metadata.
It requires some setup, which is explained in the guide. Once you have that, you simply tell Doctrine to generate or update your schema, whenever your object structure changes.
Is there an easy way to fetch db metadata from laravel?
I was looking to leverage Breezejs EntityManager, but I need to fetch the metadata on my DB and I was hoping I wouldn't have to define this twice.
Update
specifically, I'm looking to acquire schema metadata about entity structure
http://www.breezejs.com/documentation/metadata-by-hand
http://json-schema.org/examples.html
There's not direct method, but if you are curious and don't mind using DataMapper instead of ActiveRecord (switching from Eloquent to Doctrine) there's this repo that leverages support for BreezeJS generating the entity metadata from Doctrine ORM annotated models. They implemented an Employee Directory sample app, that can have laravel as one of the server variations.
I'm writing the metadata by hand for now (it's really not complicated), You can also write some code that can infer the models schema by parsing some query like 'DESCRIBE table_name' so you can stick with Eloquent.
EDIT: The answer to this question shows this DESCRIBE approach Can Eloquent models retrieve metadata on their rows?
What I'm trying to figure out is how to add new fields to a table, using Symfony2 with Doctrine2.
I used this to initially create the Entity:
php app/console doctrine:generate:entity --entity="MyMainBundle:ImagesTable" --fields="title:string(100) file:string(100)"
And I used this to create/update the tables on the database:
php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force
Now if I wanted to add new fields to the ImagesTable entity, is there an easy way to do it using the console, or do I have to manually edit the entity. I am just using 1 entity as an example right now, but in reality, there are many entities I'd be changing; so, there has to be an easier way to do it.
I've been manually editing them to create relationships, so if there is an easier way to do that as well, that'd be great.
I remember this being a lot easier with Symfony1.4 - all I had to do was create the database/tables using phpMyAdmin, and Symfony was able to generate the models with no issues.
I really hope I'm missing something here, because this won't work if I have to manually edit every entity for every change.
Doctrine generator commands are intended to help the developer to quickly prototype an idea. They generally don't produce production ready code, and the code needs to be checked to see if it contains what you want.
You can still create your model in phpmyadmin and use Doctrine reverse engineering tools, but it also doesn't produce production ready code, only intended to use in prototyping.
Creating database/tables beforehand doesn't really work well with Doctrine2, as the underlying relation between tables may not be the same as the relation between objects of your model. The whole point of ORM is to think in classes and letting Doctrine do the rest of the work for you.
Doctrine is not intended to write your entities for you, it gives you tools to build your data model, which you use to code your model in Php.
If you don't like to code your entities by hand (which is what all developers using doctrine does), you may want to have a look at RedbeanPHP, a zero-config ORM framework for PHP. It creates the database tables, columns, indexes on the fly depending on the data model you use.
I've now read kinda half of the Doctrine 2 documentation but I can't find a solution: how do I create a table for a class automatically using Doctrine?
Do I really need to work with XML/YAML or some other stuff than PHP itself? Do I really need DQL for that? Doesn't Doctrine find the names and all this stuff for me?
First of all, you have to understand that in Doctrine 2 there are three elements that play together:
entities (just plain PHP classes)
mappings (additional markup that you place on entities or in related classes)
database
Doctrine reads your entities and your mappings and connects every entity and its fields to the related database fields.
The generation of the database is done by the Doctrine\ORM\Tools\SchemaTool (SchemaTool) class, which can read metadata and define how your schema should like.
Doctrine's CLI, as said by #Marcin, provides the orm:schema-tool:create and orm:schema-tool:update commands, which are just wrappers for the SchemaTool. They help you getting started fast and keep your schema in sync with your entity definitions.
I'm not sure if I understood you correctly.
If you want to create a structure in a database, use the console function orm:schema-tool:create