1. A data manipulation paradigm shift
Sunday, September 4, 11

2. Why ?
Slow as hell
PHP 4 support
Why are you even here at CakeFest?
Sunday, September 4, 11

3. Ok, seriously...
Easy to follow conventions
Flexible in awesome proportions
Pragmatic
Good set of tools to get you productive within
minutes
Sunday, September 4, 11

4. But.. (there’s always one)
Frankenstein-like implementation of
ActiveRecord
Callbacks not firing on associations (Translate
behavior anyone?)
Models (still) returning arrays for results
Arrays are not encouraging users to have a fat
model layer
Sunday, September 4, 11

5. A faint memory of CS theory
Objects should be cohesive and
decoupled from each other
Sunday, September 4, 11

6. I wanted This!
+
Well, not quite...
Sunday, September 4, 11

7. I wanted the POPOs
You would do this using afterFind in Cake
But I wanted to automatically persist them
Sunday, September 4, 11

8. why ?
Very mature data abstraction layer
Establishing as the de-facto persistence library
in PHP
Does not impose anything on your objects,
they are just POPOs
Support for callbacks, dynamic query building,
result lazy loading...
Sunday, September 4, 11

9. My personal reasons
Writing a ORM/ODM is hard and time
consuming (already spent weeks porting
DboSource class to use PDO)
It’s already done, tested and used in other
projects and frameworks
Looked like it would stay out of the way when
integrating it with
Sunday, September 4, 11

10. My original idea
Use doctrine to support Model returning
objects in CakePHP as a plugin for 2.0
Conquer the world
RDBMS world is too broad, I needed scope restrictions...
Sunday, September 4, 11

11. Why ?
Smaller set of options, allowed me to quickly
implement most common features for a new
model layer quickly
Schema is created from PHP classes and not
the other way (think faster fixture schema)
It’s a common conference buzzword
Sunday, September 4, 11

12. Why ?
They say it’s fast!
Something between NoSQL and relational
Indices and references!
Embedded documents
It’s OK for typical CRUD stuff
Sunday, September 4, 11

13. +
A natural way to create a database: one php
object corresponds to one document
Documents consists of properties, accessors
and more embedded documents
You can also nest objects in PHP, so it still feels
natural for expressing associations
Sunday, September 4, 11

14. +
A PHP object represents a
document in a collection
Settings are described with
annotations in comments
You can reference or embed
other documents
Associations are created
through annotated
properties
Sunday, September 4, 11

15. +
Each embedded document is
represented by another object
Objects can implement their
own constructors to initialize
internal properties
It’s not mandatory to use
private + setters & getters
But, I also need the usual
CakePHP array access
Sunday, September 4, 11

16. +
Queries are done through a
repository object
Doctrine finds are very
similar to CakePHP ones
It also has magic methods
for mapping field names to
query conditions
But, I wanted a lazier way
Sunday, September 4, 11

17. Lazy Queries
Queries can be created using
a builder
array(‘field’ =>$value) is
similar, but this is using class
methods
Will not issue an actual query
to MongoDB unless accessed
the first result
I know people are used to
creating queries with arrays
Sunday, September 4, 11

18. My plan
Map $object->property access to method
accessor if the property was unreachable and
had an accessor
Implement the good old CakePHP array access
Have a way to describe associations that are
not too different from Cake
CakePHP finders and array query builder
Sunday, September 4, 11

19. Accessing this property will automatically
call the respective setUserName() and
getUserName() methods!
transparent AccessorS
Sunday, September 4, 11

20. Can also be used to access associated
documents’ properties
Array Access
Sunday, September 4, 11

21. associations
Sunday, September 4, 11

22. Array Query Builders
Sunday, September 4, 11

23. More Items in my plan
Support model callbacks
Validation
Seamless property setting from a form
submission
Pagination
Authentication using a User document
Named scopes
Sunday, September 4, 11

24. BAKING MY PLAN
+ +
Sunday, September 4, 11

25. A Document
You need to import CakeDocument and use it as
a base class for your Documents.
Import associated documents at the beginning
Annotate your classes with normal Doctrine
annotations
Properties can be public. The id should always
be private.
Setting properties as protected or private
helps you build additional logic around
them, such as sanitization, validation, etc.
You can set defaults to be saved in mongoDB
Sunday, September 4, 11

26. Associations
Aliases are used to map data
coming from a form to a property in
the document
Association types with the suffix
Embedded will save data in the save
document.
(sorry, there’s no BelongsToEmbedded)
Tries to emulate as much as possible
the association names in CakePHP
Check Doctrine documentation
for defining more complex
associations (limit, conditions,
cascade, etc..)
Sunday, September 4, 11

27. Association data
Association data is automatically loaded with the
object
You can access as many levels of associations as you
like
Sunday, September 4, 11

28. Finding
A query array takes the same keys as using
normal CakePHP models (fields, conditions,
order, limit, offset)
Operators where implemented as in normal
CakePHP models (!=, <, >, between...)
Can query nested property attributes
You still have access to the Doctrine API
Finders are lazy, they will return a Query object so you can keep
appending conditions to it. It will return values when iterated
Sunday, September 4, 11

29. Custom Finders
Similar to normal custom finders but can also be defined statically as an
array in the class definition. Optionally use a third argument for extra
options: User::recent(5)
Sunday, September 4, 11

30. Saving your data
save() is always saveAll()
You can alter object properties
directly and then save
Array data uses the
targetDocument name for
aliasing associations if no
alias is defined.
Don’t forget to flush! (once
per request should do it)
Sunday, September 4, 11

31. Almost like Home
Validation is done in the same way as you’re used to
You have (almost) all the callbacks (beforeValidate,
beforeSave, afterSave, beforeDelete, afterDelete)
created and modified properties are auto populated
Interacts very nicely with the FormHelper
Sunday, September 4, 11

32. In Controllers
Sunday, September 4, 11

33. Pagination
DocumentPaginator
You can keep stacking
finders after calling
paginate()
Iterate in your views as
you’re used to.
Sunday, September 4, 11

34. Authentication
Use DocumentAuth
Auth->user() will
return the document
object
Don’t look for array
data directly in the
session!
Sunday, September 4, 11

35. Time for a quick
demo?
thanks for attending!
http://github.com/lorenzo/MongoCake
Sunday, September 4, 11