NYCPHP Meetup

[Joseph Crawford]

Guys,

We are using CodeIgniter for our framework that will run our sites,
however the database implementation that they offer is based on the
Active Record pattern.  I have been running into issues that are
making me think this is not the pattern for us to use.

I have been going through the php|arch guide to php design patterns
and I believe that we would be better off with the Data Mapper
Pattern.

All of these patterns bring up a concern with me though.  They are
stating that each class should be related to one table.  We have
things setup like this.

Tables
Content
JobPostings
Articles
Reviews

etc.  Each of the tables have an entry in the Content table since they
all share Content in common.  Currently we have the Active Record
pattern and our models extend a base Content model.

So for example our job postings would be like this

http://jobs.ere.net/job/3431/

It will call the JobPostings model with the $this->jobs->load(3431);
which will load the job info, which then in turn calls
parent:load(3431); which will load the content for that particular
job.  I could do this in one join query and there are other times
where it would make more sense such as when grabbing multiple
locations for a JobPosting, etc.

My question is how can you join tables and still stick to the patterns
that I am reading about?  Does joining tables completely bypass the
reason for using these patterns?

I am not asking how to do a join, i know how to do that ;)  I just
would like some insight on the best practice when it comes to using
these patterns.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

-- 
Joseph Crawford Jr.
Zend Certified Engineer
Codebowl Solutions, Inc.
http://www.codebowl.com/
Blog: http://www.josephcrawford.com/
1-802-671-2021
codebowl at gmail.com