Smarter Model Object Classes

14 Feb 2011 in PostgreSQL, PHP

Absent any special switches used when creating the model object classes, there are two standard methods used as accessors for instance properties: valueForProperty('property_name') and setValueForProperty('property_name', $value).

While versatile, constantly having to write long accessor names becomes tedious very quickly. Fortunately, there is a switch called --with-property-methods available (which can be abbreviated -p) to create developer-friendly method names to access the model object properties.

cd ~/Sites/fw/install
php orm_install -p -n Istarel Workshop -w ~/Sites -a iw -r category
Initializing Application...
Parsing Tables in iw...
  Analyzing category...

Partial Listing: /iw/rsrc/model/default/DefaultCategory.php

class DefaultCategory extends ORMObject
{
   ...

// Accessors

   function setCategoryId($category_id)
   {
      $this->setValueForProperty('category_id', $category_id);
      return $this;
   }

   function categoryId()
   {
      return $this->category_id;
   }

   function setName($name)
   {
      $this->setValueForProperty('name', $name);
      return $this;
   }

   function name()
   {
      return $this->name;
   }

   function setPublicPath($public_path)
   {
      $this->setValueForProperty('public_path', $public_path);
      return $this;
   }

   function publicPath()
   {
      return $this->public_path;
   }

   ...