How do you handle Zend_Paginator? - php

I was looking at Zend_Paginator in Zend Framework project using MVC, and it looks like an intersting tool.
It looks like we can give a select object as argument to the factory, it's interesting because it means that i should return a select object from my model, is it a good way to do ?
It seems to be a bit heavy to do this, since it won't be needed all the times...
I can also give an array, which could come as a result of my method model, but in the case where i have a lot of data, it could be complicated to retrieve all the data from my database each times.
How can i handle this ?

From the doc: http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.paginator.usage.html
However, it is possible to directly supply a count or count query yourself. See the setRowCount() method in the DbSelect adapter for more information.
And
In the case of the Null adapter, in lieu of a data collection you must supply an item count to its constructor.
I would suggest doing the count yourself, and then manually setting it. That is, based upon the reading I just did. Also, the doc states that if you go the NULL route, you can provide an item-count (Integer) to the Paginator constructor instead - this seems a bit more reasonable than querying for the number with each request.

I have posted about this a few weeks ago. It is found here:
http://blog.ekini.net/2009/06/22/zend-framework-how-to-use-zend_paginator/
It is a pretty straight-forward tutorial. It starts with the form, then the controller, and goes down to the view and the paginator file.

Well, i finally found an interesting way to do.
First, i implemented a Domain Model pattern after a read on Matthew Weier O'Phinney's blog, who explains how to.
Then, i created my own adapter of Zend_Paginator, to agree with my Model.
It's the most interesting way to do, i've found until now.

Related

What does it mean to hydrate and dehydrate a Laravel Livewire component?

Could someone point me to a definition of "hydrate" and "dehydrate" as it applies to Livewire components? The only hit in the documentation search refers to
Livewire will take care of hydrating and dehydrating the model between requests with the current, non-persisted data.
In the Lifecycle hooks section, the hydrate and dehydrate class hooks are self referential.
hydrate: Runs on every request after the component is hydrated...
Responses to similar questions have indicated that hydration is filling a object with data after it's been instantiated -- that kinda makes sense, but what would "dehydrating" an object would be?
I don't know if there is a good definition of the lifecycle in the documentation other than the hooks.
I'll explain my understanding of it.
So there are two levels of hydration essentially in Livewire, one is hydrating a component, and the other is hydrating the properties of a component.
Livewire needs to send data back and forth between php and javascript for it to work the way it does. As part of the messages that get sent there is information about the component, and information about the properties. But for the information to be accessible and usable by javascript it needs to be in the right format.
The process of hydration is taking the message and converting its values back into php, creating the Livewire component and creating any of the properties that component has.
Dehydration is the reverse, it goes through all the properties, and serialises them, then it serialises the component and bundles that all into a message that gets sent to the front end.
Caleb has addressed this very question in a blog entry. The post linked to below is also linked to from the Livewire Docs, though I admit that it is only linked to from a lowly sub-section of the documentation.
I really do think that information like this should be put front-and-centre to lay the groundwork for other people's understanding the framework. Documentation that requires additional foot-notes to gain a full understanding, is by definition, not Documentation, right!?! Anyway, point is, I don't blame anyone for missing it!
Blogpost found here >>
The official explanation isn't actually much different from the answer already accepted (#JoshHanley). Nevertheless, I do find the blog to be clearer and better explained, and might help others in future.
I know that (according to SO guidelines) I'm supposed to re-word the answer as well as link to a resource, but honestly there's no short way of explaining a framework like this. You just gotta jump into the deep end I'm afraid.

Laravel - difference between Controller & Model

I'm learning Laravel and I'm watching many tutorials, but I dont really get it, what's the difference between the controller and model, because you can put in both a function.
Controllers in Laravel are used to determine how to handle http requests.
When you have anything to do with the DB, its better to place those function in the model, and call them from the controller.
In clear terms:
Model performs all operations on data from DB.
Controller call necessary model methods and ready the data.
View take care of displaying the data.
I hope this is clear enough.
You will be familiar with all of this soon.
model methods is for relationships mainly , or to make some thing for every object of this model (database table) every column in db is an object and every table is a model.
but in controller you set your app functionality that you want , and its an intermediator between model and view .
i hop this makes you good in this point.
good luck
You can write functions anywhere, you are perfectly right.
But is not an efficient way to do things.
The answers for those questions can be easily find out. Search about MVC pattern. In few words, remember brief:
MODEL => working with relational databases / storing the data
CONTROLLER => working with the logic(taking inputs, calculus etc) / general functionalities
Combining them is more efficient than working with those together, that is the reason why using a pattern is more great than writing code in a old style mode reinventing the wheel again.

Laravel + MySQL - Storing Eloquent namespaces

I was given this project to work on with absolutely no documentation or contact developer. I noticed in the database dump that they are storing what looks like PHP Namespaces for Eloquent models in a couple tables. For example an address table has a string column named "object_type" with the value always being "App\Entities\Client". I searched through the whole project for the PHP code that would use this value. Hopefully to give me insight to it's purpose. Not to my surprise, the project never uses this value. I just see it hard-coding these values upon insert into the DB.
My question is, is this some sort of Database and/or ORM modeling design practice? If so, could you explain how this could be used in a simple practical sense?
Maybe this was some concept the developer had and it never evolved. It's interesting idea but, the idea of joining through MySQL on a string conditional sounds like torture.
Sounds like Laravel polymorphic relationships:
Custom Polymorphic Types.
By default, Laravel will use the fully qualified class name to store the type of the related model.
And, yes, this is a valid modeling technique, though purists rightly argue this technique abuses normal form.
I am not sure what the developers where thinking.
But imagining we are in a forum with thread and replies to each thread. We maybe want to have a Favourites table where we can save replies and threads.
A way to do it would be to have a column in the favourites table called "object_type" (just to use the same term you have in your case) and then when we save an object into the database with eloquent we can use:
$favourite->object_type = get_class($thread); //or get_class($reply) in case we want a reply
$favourite->save();
This way will save the namespace of that class into the database. But laravel will recognise it when we get it from the database.
Hope this cold be helpful.

How to fill a custom object via the repository pattern and Laravel's Eloquent

Okay, so here's the deal. I'm working with a custom CMS, and I'd like for the code to be as optimized as possible. I've been reading/watching tuts/etc. like crazy about the repository pattern in general as well as specifically using it with Laravel's Eloquent. There are probably some really dumb questions/thoughts in here, but bear with me. :-) Sometimes there's no easy way to ask about terminology/best practices without looking silly.
As with many things, there are million ways I could "make it work"; my dilemma is essentially a matter of "best practice."
General Scenario/Question
Let's assume I am trying to get a Page for my CMS from the database. From what I can understand the typical way to set up the repository pattern with Eloquent is to have the following files:
Page.php -- the Eloquent Model
PageRepositoryInterface.php -- the "contract" for what should be in Page repo's
EloquentPageRepository.php -- the Page repository that can grab data via Eloquent
Easy enough. So I might use it this way. Assuming I have a getPageById method in EloquentPageRepository.php, I could just do something like this from my controller:
$page = $this->repo->getPageById();
Now my question arises: what type of data should getPageById() return? Some people recommend setting it up to return an Eloquent collection. Others say just a plain array or generic object.
Ideally I feel like my scenario would best lend itself to having EloquentPageRepository grab the data from Eloquent and actually return an instance of a custom Page class that I have. For example, something along the lines of this:
<?php namespace Acme\Repositories\EloquentPageRepository;
use Acme\...\PageObject as PageObject; // Better name than PageObject?
//...
class EloquentPageRepository implements PageRepositoryInterface {
// Omitting constructor, etc.
public function getPageById($id)
{
// Grab the row via Eloquent (obviously not stored in Page:: at
// this point. I'm just using it here for clarity and time's sake.
$page = Page::find($id);
// Now we have an Eloquent collection stored in $page, but I'd
// like to return the data inside an instance of my custom class.
$pageObj = new PageObject($page->title, $page->body);
return $pageObj;
}
}
To me, this seems good because it gives a consistent delivery format from repo to repo. It also allows me to perform some constructor logic on my pageObject. Finally, it allows me to have some custom methods on the PageObject (that are repository-agnostic).
It's similar to a collection, but I don't think it's exactly that. It's basically just an instance of a class that I'm immediately populating with my database info.
My questions, listed:
Is it considered bad practice to use a repo to stuff eloquent data into a specific object and return it?
I don't want to call my class "PageObject," because that's just lame. I'd way rather call it something like "PageCollection," except for the fact that it's not actually a collection. Is there actually a name for the way that I'm using this class? It's not a collection, it's a ...? I have no idea about this, I'm just searching for any input you have.
It whole depends on what you expect from the repository pattern. Are you using the repository pattern because in the future you're going to swith of data layer and needs a new repository. If you're using Eloquent as long as your cms live then you can return an eloquent object. If you want it very flexible then make a new page object(PageComposer as mentioned in the comments). This is one of the strengts of the repository pattern so I suggest you make a PageComposer class which you instantiate and return by the repository.
Normally you can call it Page because its a page and it ships some information of a page. But that name you've already give to the Eloquent model. You can consider changing the eloquent models name and call your return object Page.

php oop MVC design - proper architecture for an application to edit data

Now that I have read an awfull lot of posts, articles, questions and answers on OOP, MVC and design patterns, I still have questions on what is the best way to build what i want to build.
My little framework is build in an MVC fashion. It uses smarty as the viewer and I have a class set up as the controller that is called from the url.
Now where I think I get lost is in the model part. I might be mixing models and classes/objects to much (or to little).
Anyway an example. When the aim is to get a list of users that reside in my database:
the application is called by e.g. "users/list" The controller then runs the function list, that opens an instance of a class "user" and requests that class to retrieve a list from the table. once returned to the controller, the controller pushes it to the viewer by assigning the result set (an array) to the template and setting the template.
The user would then click on a line in the table that would tell the controler to start "user/edit" for example - which would in return create a form and fill that with the user data for me to edit.
so far so good.
right now i have all of that combined in one user class - so that class would have a function create, getMeAListOfUsers, update etc and properties like hairType and noseSize.
But proper oop design would want me to seperate "user" (with properties like, login name, big nose, curly hair) from "getme a list of users" what would feel more like a "user manager class".
If I would implement a user manager class, how should that look like then? should it be an object (can't really compare it to a real world thing) or should it be an class with just public functions so that it more or less looks like a set of functions.
Should it return an array of found records (like: array([0]=>array("firstname"=>"dirk", "lastname"=>"diggler")) or should it return an array of objects.
All of that is still a bit confusing to me, and I wonder if anyone can give me a little insight on how to do approach this the best way.
The level of abstraction you need for your processing and data (Business Logic) depends on your needs. For example for an application with Transaction Scripts (which probably is the case with your design), the class you describe that fetches and updates the data from the database sounds valid to me.
You can generalize things a bit more by using a Table Data Gateway, Row Data Gateway or Active Record even.
If you get the feeling that you then duplicate a lot of code in your transaction scripts, you might want to create your own Domain Model with a Data Mapper. However, I would not just blindly do this from the beginning because this needs much more code to get started. Also it's not wise to write a Data Mapper on your own but to use an existing component for that. Doctrine is such a component in PHP.
Another existing ORM (Object Relational Mapper) component is Propel which provides Active Records.
If you're just looking for a quick way to query your database, you might find NotORM inspiring.
You can find the Patterns listed in italics in
http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/index.html
which lists all patterns in the book Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.
I'm not an expert at this but have recently done pretty much exactly the same thing. The way I set it up is that I have one class for several rows (Users) and one class for one row (User). The "several rows class" is basically just a collection of (static) functions and they are used to retrieve row(s) from a table, like so:
$fiveLatestUsers = Users::getByDate(5);
And that returns an array of User objects. Each User object then has methods for retrieving the fields in the table (like $user->getUsername() or $user->getEmail() etc). I used to just return an associative array but then you run into occasions where you want to modify the data before it is returned and that's where having a class with methods for each field makes a lot of sense.
Edit: The User object also have methods for updating and deleting the current row;
$user->setUsername('Gandalf');
$user->save();
$user->delete();
Another alternative to Doctrine and Propel is PHP Activerecords.
Doctrine and Propel are really mighty beasts. If you are doing a smaller project, I think you are better off with something lighter.
Also, when talking about third-party solutions there are a lot of MVC frameworks for PHP like: Kohana, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Zend (of course)...
All of them have their own ORM implementations, usually lighter alternatives.
For Kohana framework there is also Auto modeler which is supposedly very lightweight.
Personally I'm using Doctrine, but its a huge project. If I was doing something smaller I'd sooner go with a lighter alternative.

Categories