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Database Access & ORM

In CakePHP, working with data through the database is done with two primary object types:

  • Repositories or table objects provide access to collections of data. They allow you to save new records, modify/delete existing ones, define relations, and perform bulk operations.

  • Entities represent individual records and allow you to define row/record level behavior & functionality.

These two classes are usually responsible for managing almost everything that happens regarding your data, its validity, interactions and evolution of the information workflow in your domain of work.

CakePHP’s built-in ORM specializes in relational databases, but can be extended to support alternative datasources.

The CakePHP ORM borrows ideas and concepts from both ActiveRecord and Datamapper patterns. It aims to create a hybrid implementation that combines aspects of both patterns to create a fast, simple to use ORM.

Before we get started exploring the ORM, make sure you configure your database connections.

Quick Example

To get started you don’t have to write any code. If you’ve followed the CakePHP conventions for your database tables you can just start using the ORM. For example if we wanted to load some data from our articles table we would start off creating our Articles table class. Create src/Model/Table/ArticlesTable.php with the following code:

<?php
namespace App\Model\Table;

use Cake\ORM\Table;

class ArticlesTable extends Table
{
}

Then in a controller or command we can have CakePHP create an instance for us:

public function someMethod()
{
    $resultset = $this->fetchTable('Articles')->find()->all();

    foreach ($resultset as $row) {
        echo $row->title;
    }
}

In other contexts, you can use the LocatorAwareTrait which add accessor methods for ORM tables:

use Cake\ORM\Locator\LocatorAwareTrait;

public function someMethod()
{
    $articles = $this->fetchTable('Articles');
    // more code.
}

Within a static method you can use the Cake\Datasource\FactoryLocator to get the table locator:

$articles = TableRegistry::getTableLocator()->get('Articles');

Table classes represent collections of entities. Next, lets create an entity class for our Articles. Entity classes let you define accessor and mutator methods, define custom logic for individual records and much more. We’ll start off by adding the following to src/Model/Entity/Article.php after the <?php opening tag:

namespace App\Model\Entity;

use Cake\ORM\Entity;

class Article extends Entity
{
}

Entities use the singular CamelCase version of the table name as their class name by default. Now that we have created our entity class, when we load entities from the database we’ll get instances of our new Article class:

use Cake\ORM\Locator\LocatorAwareTrait;

$articles = $this->fetchTable('Articles');
$resultset = $articles->find()->all();

foreach ($resultset as $row) {
    // Each row is now an instance of our Article class.
    echo $row->title;
}

CakePHP uses naming conventions to link the Table and Entity class together. If you need to customize which entity a table uses you can use the entityClass() method to set a specific classname.

See the chapters on Table Objects and Entities for more information on how to use table objects and entities in your application.

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