I have to check if an user is online (in-game), and if he's not then do another checks to perform a sql update.
Actually, I have these two queries.
$isOnline = DB::connection('mssql')->table('USER_STAT')->where('user_id', $userID)->value('ConnectionStat');
$character = Character::where('acc_id', $userID)->where('Name', $characterName)->firstOrFail();
Is there a way I can use union or join in order to save a DB query? I believe this is not a good practice, and some better method is out there, which I can't find in the docs.
I tried something like this, but without success:
$character = Character::where('acc_id', $userID)->where('Name', $characterName)->firstOrFail();
$result = DB::connection('mssql')->table('USER_STAT')->where('user_id', $userID)->union($character)->get();
Thanks in advance!
Using a relation in your Character Model to the Model of the USER_STAT table you can easily lookup the things you need to determine if an update somewhere is needed.
Eloquent Relationships
This does not consolidate the queries into one, like with a join, but they are not heavy anyway, and using the ORM to the fullest will have more significant advantages in the long run.
If you think you must use an SQL-join you must stick to the querybuilder, but the ORM is usually the better choice
Query Builder Joins
I'm developing app with FuelPHP & mySql and I'm using the provided ORM functionality. The problem is with following tables:
Table: pdm_data
Massive table (350+ columns, many rows)
Table data is rather static (updates only once a day)
Primary key: obj_id
Table: change_request
Only few columns
Data changes often (10-20 times / min)
References primary key (obj_id from table pdm_data)
Users can customize datasheet that is visible to them, eg. they can save filters (eg. change_request.obj_id=34 AND pdm_data.state = 6) on columns which then are translated to query realtime with ORM.
However, the querying with ORM is really slow as the table pdm_data is large and even ~100 rows will result in many mbs of data. The largest problem seems to be in FuelPHP ORM: even if the query itself is relatively fast model hydration etc. takes many seconds. Ideal solution would be to cache results from pdm_data table as it is rather static. However, as far as I know FuelPHP doesn't let you cache tables through relations (you can cache the complete result of query, thus both tables or none).
Furthermore, using normal SQL query with join instead of ORM is not ideal solution, as I need to handle other tasks where hydrated models are awesome.
I have currently following code:
//Initialize the query and use eager-loading
$query = Model_Changerequest::query()->related('pdmdata');
foreach($filters as $filter)
{
//First parameter can point to either table
$query->where($filter[0], $filter[1], $filter[2]);
}
$result = $query->get();
...
Does someone have a good solution for this?
Thanks for reading!
The slowness of the version 1 ORM is a known problem which is being addressed with v2. My current benchmarks are showing that v1 orm takes 2.5 seconds (on my machine, ymmv) to hydrate 40k rows while the current v2 alpha takes around 800ms.
For now I am afraid that the easiest solution is to do away with the ORM for large selects and construct the queries using the DB class. I know you said that you want to keep the abstraction of the ORM to ease development, one solution is to use as_object('MyModel') to return populated model objects.
On the other hand if performance is your main concern then the ORM is simply not suitable.
I'm really struggling with a recurring OOP / database concept.
Please allow me to explain the issue with pseudo-PHP-code.
Say you have a "user" class, which loads its data from the users table in its constructor:
class User {
public $name;
public $height;
public function __construct($user_id) {
$result = Query the database where the `users` table has `user_id` of $user_id
$this->name= $result['name'];
$this->height = $result['height'];
}
}
Simple, awesome.
Now, we have a "group" class, which loads its data from the groups table joined with the groups_users table and creates user objects from the returned user_ids:
class Group {
public $type;
public $schedule;
public $users;
public function __construct($group_id) {
$result = Query the `groups` table, joining the `groups_users` table,
where `group_id` = $group_id
$this->type = $result['type'];
$this->schedule = $result['schedule'];
foreach ($result['user_ids'] as $user_id) {
// Make the user objects
$users[] = new User($user_id);
}
}
}
A group can have any number of users.
Beautiful, elegant, amazing... on paper. In reality, however, making a new group object...
$group = new Group(21); // Get the 21st group, which happens to have 4 users
...performs 5 queries instead of 1. (1 for the group and 1 for each user.) And worse, if I make a community class, which has many groups in it that each have many users within them, an ungodly number of queries are ran!
The Solution, Which Doesn't Sit Right To Me
For years, the way I've got around this, is to not code in the above fashion, but instead, when making a group for instance, I would join the groups table to the groups_users table to the users table as well and create an array of user-object-like arrays within the group object (never using/touching the user class):
class Group {
public $type;
public $schedule;
public $users;
public function __construct($group_id) {
$result = Query the `groups` table, joining the `groups_users` table,
**and also joining the `users` table,**
where `group_id` = $group_id
$this->type = $result['type'];
$this->schedule = $result['schedule'];
foreach ($result['users'] as $user) {
// Make user arrays
$users[] = array_of_user_data_crafted_from_the_query_result;
}
}
}
...but then, of course, if I make a "community" class, in its constructor I'll need to join the communities table with the communities_groups table with the groups table with the groups_users table with the users table.
...and if I make a "city" class, in its constructor I'll need to join the cities table with the cities_communities table with the communities table with the communities_groups table with the groups table with the groups_users table with the users table.
What an unmitigated disaster!
Do I have to choose between beautiful OOP code with a million queries VS. 1 query and writing these joins by hand for every single superset? Is there no system that automates this?
I'm using CodeIgniter, and looking into countless other MVC's, and projects that were built in them, and cannot find a single good example of anyone using models without resorting to one of the two flawed methods I've outlined.
It appears this has never been done before.
One of my coworkers is writing a framework that does exactly this - you create a class that includes a model of your data. Other, higher models can include that single model, and it crafts and automates the table joins to create the higher model that includes object instantiations of the lower model, all in a single query. He claims he's never seen a framework or system for doing this before, either.
Please Note:
I do indeed always use separate classes for logic and persistence. (VOs and DAOs - this is the entire point of MVCs). I have merely combined the two in this thought-experiment, outside of an MVC-like architecture, for simplicity's sake. Rest assured that this issue persists regardless of the separation of logic and persistence. I believe this article, introduced to me by James in the comments below this question, seems to indicate that my proposed solution (which I've been following for years) is, in fact, what developers currently do to solve this issue. This question is, however, attempting to find ways of automating that exact solution, so it doesn't always need to be coded by hand for every superset. From what I can see, this has never been done in PHP before, and my coworker's framework will be the first to do so, unless someone can point me towards one that does.
And, also, of course I never load data in constructors, and I only call the load() methods that I create when I actually need the data. However, that is unrelated to this issue, as in this thought experiment (and in the real-life situations where I need to automate this), I always need to eager-load the data of all subsets of children as far down the line as it goes, and not lazy-load them at some future point in time as needed. The thought experiment is concise -- that it doesn't follow best practices is a moot point, and answers that attempt to address its layout are likewise missing the point.
EDIT : Here is a database schema, for clarity.
CREATE TABLE `groups` (
`group_id` int(11) NOT NULL, <-- Auto increment
`make` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`model` varchar(20) NOT NULL
)
CREATE TABLE `groups_users` ( <-- Relational table (many users to one group)
`group_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`user_id` int(11) NOT NULL
)
CREATE TABLE `users` (
`user_id` int(11) NOT NULL, <-- Auto increment
`name` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`height` int(11) NOT NULL,
)
(Also note that I originally used the concepts of wheels and cars, but that was foolish, and this example is much clearer.)
SOLUTION:
I ended up finding a PHP ORM that does exactly this. It is Laravel's Eloquent. You can specify the relationships between your models, and it intelligently builds optimized queries for eager loading using syntax like this:
Group::with('users')->get();
It is an absolute life saver. I haven't had to write a single query. It also doesn't work using joins, it intelligently compiles and selects based on foreign keys.
Say you have a "wheel" class, which loads its data from the wheels table in its constructor
Constructors should not be doing any work. Instead they should contain only assignments. Otherwise you make it very hard to test the behavior of the instance.
Now, we have a "car" class, which loads its data from the cars table joined with the cars_wheels table and creates wheel objects from the returned wheel_ids:
No. There are two problems with this.
Your Car class should not contain both code for implementing "car logic" and "persistence logic". Otherwise you are breaking SRP. And wheels are a dependency for the class, which means that the wheels should be injected as parameter for the constructor (most likely - as a collection of wheels, or maybe an array).
Instead you should have a mapper class, which can retrieve data from database and store it in the WheelCollection instance. And a mapper for car, which will store data in Car instance.
$car = new Car;
$car->setId( 42 );
$mapper = new CarMapper( $pdo );
if ( $mapper->fetch($car) ) //if there was a car in DB
{
$wheels = new WheelCollection;
$otherMapper = new WheelMapper( $pdo );
$car->addWheels( $wheels );
$wheels->setType($car->getWheelType());
// I am not a mechanic. There is probably some name for describing
// wheels that a car can use
$otherMapper->fetch( $wheels );
}
Something like this. The mapper in this case are responsible for performing the queries. And you can have several source for them, for example: have one mapper that checks the cache and only, if that fails, pull data from SQL.
Do I really have to choose between beautiful OOP code with a million queries VS. 1 query and disgusting, un-OOP code?
No, the ugliness comes from fact that active record pattern is only meant for the simplest of usecases (where there is almost no logic associated, glorified value-objects with persistence). For any non-trivial situation it is preferable to apply data mapper pattern.
..and if I make a "city" class, in its constructor I'll need to join the cities table with the cities_dealerships table with the dealerships table with the dealerships_cars table with the cars table with the cars_wheels table with the wheels table.
Jut because you need data about "available cares per dealership in Moscow" does not mean that you need to create Car instances, and you definitely will not care about wheels there. Different parts of site will have different scale at which they operate.
The other thing is that you should stop thinking of classes as table abstractions. There is no rule that says "you must have 1:1 relation between classes and tables".
Take the Car example again. If you look at it, having separate Wheel (or even WheelSet) class is just stupid. Instead you should just have a Car class which already contains all it's parts.
$car = new Car;
$car->setId( 616 );
$mapper = new CarMapper( $cache );
$mapper->fetch( $car );
The mapper can easily fetch data not only from "Cars" table but also from "Wheel" and "Engines" and other tables and populate the $car object.
Bottom line: stop using active record.
P.S.: also, if you care about code quality, you should start reading PoEAA book. Or at least start watching lectures listed here.
my 2 cents
ActiveRecord in Rails implements the concept of lazy loading, that is deferring database queries until you actually need the data. So if you instantiate a my_car = Car.find(12) object, it only queries the cars table for that one row. If later you want my_car.wheels then it queries the wheels table.
My suggestion for your pseudo code above is to not load every associated object in the constructor. The car constructor should query for the car only, and should have a method to query for all of it's wheels, and another to query it's dealership, which only queries for the dealership and defers collecting all of the other dealership's cars until you specifically say something like my_car.dealership.cars
Postscript
ORMs are database abstraction layers, and thus they must be tuned for ease of querying and not fine tuning. They allow you to rapidly build queries. If later you decide that you need to fine tune your queries, then you can switch to issuing raw sql commands or trying to otherwise optimize how many objects you're fetching. This is standard practice in Rails when you start doing performance tuning - look for queries that would be more efficient when issued with raw sql, and also look for ways to avoid eager loading (the opposite of lazy loading) of objects before you need them.
In general, I'd recommend having a constructor that takes effectively a query row, or a part of a larger query. How do do this will depend on your ORM. That way, you can get efficient queries but you can construct the other model objects after the fact.
Some ORMs (django's models, and I believe some of the ruby ORMs) try to be clever about how they construct queries and may be able to automate this for you. The trick is to figure out when the automation is going to be required. I do not have personal familiarity with PHP ORMs.
I've been programming procedural code for quite some time, and recently I've been learning MVC. I have tried a couple of frameworks and decided I wanted to write my own from scratch to learn it inside and out. So far I have a working MVC framework (and it works great!) but I'm trying to determine the best way to query related tables.
As of now, in my member model, I use the following to get a list of the members and their rank_name
SELECT m.*, r.`name` AS rank_name
FROM `{$this->table}` AS m
LEFT JOIN `ranks` AS r
ON r.`id` = m.`rank_id`
This works fine, but it does not seem like the way it's supposed to be done in MVC. After working with frameworks like cakephp, I know that member hasOne rank (or is it rank hasMany member?)
The only alternative I thought of was to query the members table by itself in the member model, and then call a method in the rank model to get the rank name for each row, like this:
// member model
SELECT *
FROM `{this->table}`
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
$data []= $row;
$data['rank_name'] = $this->Rank->get_name($row['rank_id']);
}
But this can't be very efficient, having to run a separate query for each member. The only other concept I thought of was using MySQL's IN(x, y, z) function to get the rank names and then merging the arrays somehow.
What is the best practice for this in MVC?
Maybe an ORM (object relational mapper) is what you're looking for. An ORM assists you in storing and retrieving your modelobjects from the database.
For PHP I guess your best choice is Doctrine.
I am looking to execute this statement via Zend Framework. As I understand it, I can use Zend_Db_Select. Is it possible to use Zend_Db_Table?
Three tables: classes, students, and class_students
select classes.name, students.student_id, students.fname, students.lname from students, classes, class_students where class_students.student_id=students.student_id AND class_students.class_id=classes.class_id;
yes, is possible - Zend_Db_Table provides you with an interface to execute a variety of operations on a table. For example, considering the multiple table selection that you want to perform, and assuming you have your db adapter properly configured, we can end up with something like the following:
$table = new Model_DbTable_Classes(); // which extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract
$select = $table->select()->setIntegrityCheck(false);
$select->join('class_students', 'class_students.class_id = classes.class_id')
->join('students', 'student.student_id = class_students.student_id')
->where('classes.class_id = ?', 1)
->where('student.student_id = ?', 10);
$result = $table->fetchAll($select);
print_r($result->toArray());
For this particular case I wouldn't use the Zend_Db_Table though, I tend to use Zend_Db_Table when I need just to take actions upon one single table. As for multiple table selections I'd rather go with db select, or structuring my query old-school-fashioned (SQL string), and fetch it using my db object.
Hope it helps :)
M.