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Business Models

Models are logically located between Controllers - which render views and validate user input - and Data Access Objects (DAOs), that are low-level interfaces to a storage backend or Web service.

They are associated with their respective Dao using a protected class property:

// DAO class name without namespace or postfix
protected $_daoName = ''; 

Example

<?php

namespace App\Model;

use Doctrine\ActiveRecord\Model\EntityModel;

class User extends EntityModel
{
    protected $_daoName = 'User';

    public function delete() 
    {
        $dao = $this->getEntityDao();
        $dao->is_deleted = 1;
        $dao->update();
    }

    public function undelete() 
    {
        $dao = $this->getEntityDao();
        $dao->is_deleted = 0;
        $dao->update();
    }

    public function search(array $cond, array $options = array()) 
    {
        $cond['is_deleted'] = 0;
        return parent::search($cond, $options);
    }

    public function getValues()
    {
        $result = parent::getValues();
        unset($result['password']);
        return $result;
    }
}

Validation

How much validation should be implemented within a model? Wherever invalid data can lead to security issues or major inconsistencies, some core validation rules must be implemented in the model layer. Model exception messages usually don’t require translation (in multilingual applications), since invalid values should be recognized beforehand by a form class. If you expect certain exceptions, you should catch and handle them in your controllers.

API

Public interfaces of models are high-level and should reflect all use cases within their domain. There are a number of standard use-cases that are pre-implemented in the base class Doctrine\ActiveRecord\Model\EntityModel:

createModel(string $name = '', Dao $dao = null): Create a new model instance

find($id): Find a record by primary key

reload(): Reload values from database

findAll(array $cond = array(), $wrapResult = true): Find multiple records; if $wrapResult is false, plain DAOs are returned instead of model instances

search(array $cond, array $options = array()): Returns a SearchResult object ($options can contain count, offset, sort order etc, see search() in the DAO documentation above)

searchAll(array $cond = array(), $order = false): Simple version of search(), similar to findAll()

searchOne(array $cond = array()): Search a single record; throws an exception if 0 or more than one record are found

searchIds(array $cond, array $options = array()): Returns an array of matching primary keys for the given search condition

getModelName(): Returns the model name without prefix and postfix

getId(): Returns the ID of the currently loaded record (throws exception, if empty)

hasId(): Returns true, if the model instance has an ID assigned (primary key)

getValues(): Returns all model properties as associative array

getEntityTitle(): Returns the common name of this entity

isDeletable(): Returns true, if the model instance can be deleted with delete()

isUpdatable(): Returns true, if the model instance can be updated with update($values)

isCreatable(): Returns true, if new entities can be created in the database with create($values)

batchEdit(array $ids, array $properties): Update data for multiple records

getTableName(): Returns the name of the associated main database table

hasTimestampEnabled(): Returns true, if timestamps are enabled for the associated DAO

delete(): Permanently delete the entity record from the database

save(array $values): Create a new record using the values provided

update(array $values): Update model instance database record; before assigning multiple values to a model instance, data should be validated using a form class