Taking control of your models

Attribute manipulation

Column aliasing

Here is how to define your model's attributes:

class Author extends SimpleAR\Model
{
    protected static $_columns = array(
        'first_name',
        'last_name',
        'years_since_birth',
    );
}

But we can see that "years_since_birth" is not really appropriate. "age" would be a better wording:

protected static $_columns = array(
        'first_name',
        'last_name',
        // <attribute name> => <column name>
        'age' => 'years_since_birth',
    );

Note: A better solution might be to change the field name in database. But sometimes, you are not able to change it.

Getters and setters

SimpleAR\Model class provides some methods to get and set attributes.

Get all attributes

You can retrieve every object's attribute with their values with the attributes() method:

$author = Author::create(['first_name' => 'John', 'age' => 43]);
print_r($author->attributes());

// Result:
// array(
//     'id'         => 1,
//     'first_name' => 'John',
//     'last_name'  => null,
//     'age'        => 43,
// );

Get and set several attributes at once

You can use get() and set() methods to respectively get and set several attributes at once.

Very handy!

Get model's columns

Use columns() static method to retrieve an associative array between attribute names and column names.

Example with Author model:

print_r(Author::columns());

// Result:
// array(
//     'id'         => 'id',
//     'first_name' => 'first_name',
//     'last_name'  => 'last_name',
//     'age'        => 'years_since_birth',
// );

Custom getters and setters

You can define custom getters and setters method for specific attribute that will be called when trying to access to the attribute.

public function set_password($raw)
{
    $this->_attr('password', md5($raw));
}

// ...

// Then, you set `password` attribute this way:
$author->password = 'yeah!';

Note: Use `_attr()` method inside getters and setters to prevent infinite loop.

You can write a getter or setter for attribute that does not “exist”:

public function get_name()
{
    return $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name;
}

And then use it in a view as in following example:

<p>
    Hello, <?php $user->name; ?>!
</p>

Model configuration

Global ordering

You can define a model-wide sort ordering when retrieving several instances from database. Take a Country model that modelizes a country. In your application, you always want to retrieve countries sorted in alphabetical order.

class Country extends SimpleAR\Model
{
    protected static $_orderBy = array(
        'name', // Equivalent to: 'name' => 'ASC'
    );
}

// Result will automatically be sorted.
Country::all();

Use `$_orderBy` class attribute to define a global ordering.

Global conditions

You can define model-wide conditions. It means that these conditions will be applied to every query made on this model.

// Let's take Article model for an example. On your blog, you never want offline
// articles.
Article::setGlobalConditions(['status' => 'online']);

This way, the condition "status is online" will be applied to each query made over Article model.

You can use `MyModel::getGlobalConditions()` to get current global conditions of `MyModel`.

Callbacks

SimpleAR provides a collection of callback methods that you can overwrite to take control of your model instance.

• _onBeforeLoad();
• _onAfterLoad();
• _onBeforeInsert();
• _onAfterInsert();
• _onBeforeUpdate();
• _onAfterUpdate();
• _onBeforeDelete();
• _onAfterDelete().