I'm creating a new web application (Rails 3 beta), of which pieces of it will access data from a legacy mysql database that a current php application is using.
I do not wish to modify the legacy db schema, I just want to be able to read/write to it, as well as the rails application having it's own database using activerecord for the newer stuff. I'm using mysql for the rails app, so I have the adapter installed.
How is the best way to do this? For example, I want contacts to come from the old database. Should I create a contacts controller, and manually call sql to get the variables for the views?
Or should I create a Contact model, and define attributes that match the fields in the database, and am I able to use it like Contact.mail_address to have it call "SELECT mailaddr FROM contacts WHERE id=Contact.id".
Sorry, I've never done much in Rails outside of the standard stuff that is documented well. I'm not sure of what the best approach would be. Ideally, I want the contacts to be presented to my rails application as native as possible, so that I can expose them RESTfully for API access.
Any suggestions and code examples would be much appreciated
This really depends on how esoteric your legacy db is. This affects the solution considerably. If your legacy db is quite similar to Rails conventions then using a model with a few customizations will probably prove as the best approach. However I've heard of people who wrote a script that constantly reimported data from the legacy db into a new db - the whole structure of the db was so wrong that approach was worth it.
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I have developed a Web Interface for managing our devices (Dedicated Servers/Switches/etc) at work, however with my basic PHP knowledge, I ignored OOP completely. In the current state it just queries the MYSQL Database and populates the tables. Functions are all stored in a Functions.php file and called as needed.
As the project is functional and used now, I would like to rewrite this to be more efficient as it will be used among our other brands. I am having trouble applying the concept of classes to this project though (I use them all the time in C#/C++).
The way I see it, each Device be it a server, switch, etc. could be a part of a Device class that keeps properties like Datacenter, Name, etc. and methods such as Update, Delete, etc. I suppose I could additionally have a base Device class, then subsequent classes such as Server/Switch/etc. which inherit from that.
My question then is how is this more efficient? Each time the page loads I am still going to have to generate each instance of Device and then populate it from the Database, why I don't really see how this is better than the current implementation.
Thanks for any insight!
Using OOP is mostly unrelated to performance or efficiency. However, it allows you to organize your code in a modular fashion, and encourage code reuse.
A better webpage to explain can be found here.
At my work we have two separate sites that are very closely related. One of them is a ASP/MSSQL site and the other is a PHP/Postgres site.
I want to create a REST API that everything from now on is built on top of. I would like it to be tied to both DBs so that it can be a a single point of retrieving and setting data.
I was thinking of using a DBA like Doctine to keep from writing queries in two different syntax. In the same system is it possible to tie parts of Doctrine to the MSSQL and other parts to Postgres?
If so, how? Any other thoughts on design are welcomed.
Within your application framework, you need to configure two separate entity managers, each of which will connect to a different database. More on entity managers at http://docs.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/configuration.html
The core architectural pattern is that your models are plain PHP objects, and the entity manager (Data Mapper) will read the mapping configuration to know how to map the models to a database.
If you're writing a REST based API it shouldn't really matter what the DB backend is. For example, if you write your API in a combination of Django and tastypie, you could simply swap out a settings.py config to work with both Postgres and MySQL... or even MongoDB if you so chose
The point is, a REST API is a generic solution that can be used by a multitude of languages, you should chose a framework that allows you the same flexibility in DB backends to implement.
When developing bigger systems in team, often, there are separate guys for implementing application and database stuff. In such cases, database design and implementation appears first: database developer designs and creates tables with some modeling tool. As an application developer, you are tempted to create and add the rules from scratch in your app code. However, then you are duplicating the work, because actual column type and length restrictions are already set in every DB table. Also, if database developer is responsible and is updating the DB then there might happen bugs when you forget to update the rules in app side. So, you just need to grab those rules from existing database schema tables and "mount" to your input validation (or model) classes.
So, the question is are there any general approaches (and examples), libraries or frameworks that show how this should be done. I'v looked at Codeigniter framework that has rules, but those rules are not captured from existing db, you need to define them explicitly.
PS. Most preferable would be simple (but sufficient) solutions because I already use a lightweight Codeigniter-like framework, and I don't want to rely on heavyweight approaches.
You could try Zend_Db_Table_Abstract. While the Zend framework requires some initial setup, you can use only the pieces you require for your project (as opposed to some other PHP frameworks). You can use the describeTable() method to discover something about the table structure, and you can overload the insert() function to explicitly check types, or do whatever other validation you require.
Another potential option is fSchema, part of the flourish library. I have had good experiences with flourish in the past.
Both are modular, well documented, and easy to use.
I am using a commercial PHP web application that stores information in a mysql database, and find myself needing to create some custom reports on that database information, ideally presented via the web with the ability of exporting the reports to PDF or some external format as well.
I could just slap together some PHP to query the DB and then show the results of SQL queries against that DB, but was hoping there may be a more intelligent framework I could employ to generate these reports faster and easier now as well as in the future. Codeigniter looks like it may be a good starting point, but I'm not in love with it. What do people use when they need to work with an existing SQL db info but dont want to roll it all from scratch?
edit - I know php/python/ruby enough to operate, but I'm rusty so starting from scratch will make the process longer than it probably needs to be. I'm looking to leverage quality frameworks if they exist to give me the best results in the longrun
I would recommend Django, it has a management command that can help automatically generate models from an existing database, inspectdb. You could leverage that to quickly get going and start using Django's powerful ORM to build your reports.
I am fond of dbstructure definition of msaccess which lets defining at once and creating the data entry forms, datatables and reports at once easily.
I have been searching for some framework which would generate the data entry forms, data tables and reports easily. I guess the only thing I need to define is complete datatable structure.
Is there any like that or better one than that?
EDIT:
well i am afraid that PHP frameworks have been limited to programmers only. I would like to extend it with some automated functions like autoform in msaccess which would generate data entry form, auto report for data listing. So that my development time would be again some less. I found doctrine nearly matching my specification but not sure as i haven't fully explored doctrine
Cake offers both "hard" (bake) and "soft" scaffolding, which should be very close to what you want. It's still only meant as a quick proof-of-concept tool and to get you up and running faster so you can concentrate on programming the business logic. It's not meant as a hands-off solution nor to be used in production.
What you seem to be looking for is a database frontend like phpMyAdmin or SQL Buddy, not a PHP framework.
Symfony provides an admin generator that builds all the forms on the fly and it will also update itself when you change your db schema. It is based on doctrine which you say you looked at so that would make things a bit easier for you.