Persisted models

Intro

• I don't like ActiveRecord because of tight coupling with the database,
• I am not so comfortable with Data mappers because a mapper breaks model encapsulation,
• I like the idea to keep 'The State' separately from the logic.

Here is the way

The concept

To implement an entity, one should create two classes: Model and Properties. Model class contains domain-specific logic only. All state that should persist is located in Properties. Model has its Properties aggregated:

class Model implements ModelInterface
{
    /**
     * @var Properties
     */
    private $properties;

    public function __construct($properties)
    {
         $this->properties = $properties;
    }
}

This library takes care about the Properties, all its public fields and also relations can be saved/loaded in the Containers. Currently there is SqlDb, CouchDb, and Memory container.

It is recommended to declare Model's constructor signature that doesn't allow to create an instance that makes no sense from the business logic point of view.

$person = new Person\Model($propertiesBag);
$employee = new Employee\Model($company, $propertiesBag);

source: Person\Model | Employee\Model

Obvious responsibilities

To achieve persistency we don't need to store A model, it is necessary to store its properties.

// save/update
$dbContainer = new Persisted\Container\SqlDb($connection);
$person->save($dbContainer);

// load
$persistedPerson = Person\Model::load($dbContainer, $id);

source: Persisted\Container\SqlDb

Handling user input with 'Editors', 'A Editor' is kind of a Container.

$editor = new ProfileEditor($person);
// validation here
$editor->edit($userInput);

$editedPerson = Person\Model::load($editor);
$editedPerson->save($dbContainer);

Strong separation between different types of object relations

For example person properties can have contact info aggregated, it gets stored and updated together with person:

$contactInfoModel = new ContactInfo\Model($contactInfoProperties);

$personProperties = array(
    'name' => 'John',
    'contactInfo => $contactInfoModel
);

On the other hand, there is a person who's working in a company. These objects are connected by foreign key and created/updated separately.

$company->save($dbContainer);
$employee = new Employee\Model($company, $employeeProperties);

// this won't update the company, but create one-to-many reference company -> person in the container
$employee->save($dbContainer);

A model can have a list of another models connected. This so-called many-to-many relation is possible using Collections.

$collection = new Keymarker\Collection;
$collection['Example'] = new Keymarker\Model(new Keymarker\Properties(array('name' => 'Example'));

Examples

See test cases to learn recommended usage:

• Simply a Model with properties Company/ModelTest.php
• A Person having CreditCard aggregated, a Person that can be tagged with Keymarkers Person/ModelTest.php
• An Employee working in a Company Employee/ModelTest.php
• Keymarker model that has natural keys Keymarker/ModelTest.php, Keymarker/PropertiesTest.php
• Load/Create/Update/Save a persistent model ModelPersonEditorWorkflowTest.php

...the work is in progress...