Auto Building

What the Auto Builder (createTables.php) Does

One of the essential features of an SQL building tool is to to have some understanding of the database structure, So that Integers can be checked, and strings can be escaped. There a few ways that Querying the database for the table structure could be accomplished

• on every SQL query

• At the initialization of every web page.

• Once, while setting up the application, and store it in a file

The other key concept of DB_DataObject is that you work with extended classes of DB_DataObject, which do all the 'table' related work. Setting up these classes for a large database can be time consuming, so the createTables.php file will automatically build the skeletons for all these class files.

To start the auto builder simply go to the pear/DB/DataObject/ directory, and type c:\php4\php.exe createTables.php myconfig.ini this will read your configuration file and generate all the base classes, along with the data definition file.

Default Class Definition

The default generated class looks like this.

Beispiel 1. an generated extended class /* * Table Definition for group */ class DataObjects_Grp extends DB_DataObject { ###START_AUTOCODE /* the code below is auto generated do not remove the above tag */ var $__table='group'; // table name var $id; // int primary_key var $name; // string var $grp_owner; // int var $official; // string var $street; // string var $postcode; // string var $city; // string var $homepage; // string var $email; // string var $extra; // blob /* ZE2 compatibility trick */ function __clone() { return $this;} /* Static get */ function staticGet($k,$v=NULL) { return DB_DataObject::staticGet('DataObjects_Grp',$k,$v); } /* the code above is auto generated do not remove the tag below */ ###END_AUTOCODE }

The class defines the table name, and comments some of table columns for your reference, It also adds the staticGet() method, which can be used to quickly get single rows as Objects. You should add your table related code after the ###END_AUTOCODE.

The __clone() function will only be generated on pre Zend Engine 2 applications, and it is recommended to use it so that your code will be Forward and Backward Compatible with the new engine.

Database Definition File

The default generated database definition file looks like this.

Beispiel 2. Database configuration file [group] id = 1 name = 2 grp_owner = 1 official = 2 street = 2 postcode = 2 city = 2 homepage = 2 email = 2 extra = 2 [group__keys] id = 1

The blocks indicate either tables and the type of field (1=integer,2=string), or a list of keys for each table. You should not need to edit file.