Welcome to the Cookbook

A datasource can, and should implement at least one of the following methods: create, read, update and/or delete (the actual method signatures & implementation details are not important for the moment, and will be described later). You need not implement more of the methods listed above than necessary - if you need a read-only datasource, there's no reason to implement create and update.

Methods that must be implemented

• describe($model)
• listSources()
• At least one of:
  • create($model, $fields = array(), $values = array())
  • read($model, $queryData = array())
  • update($model, $fields = array(), $values = array())
  • delete($model, $id = null)

It is also possible (and sometimes quite useful) to define the $_schema class attribute inside the datasource itself, instead of in the model.

And that's pretty much all there is to it. By coupling this datasource to a model, you are then able to use Model::find()/save() as you would normally, and the appropriate data and/or parameters used to call those methods will be passed on to the datasource itself, where you can decide to implement whichever features you need (e.g. Model::find options such as 'conditions' parsing, 'limit' or even your own custom parameters).