Mapsicle is a data mapper for PHP (versions 4 and 5), inspired by iBATIS. Mapsicle is not a direct port (as it wouldn't make sense to be), but Mapsicle will feel familiar if you have used iBATIS before.

With Mapsicle, you can place all of your SQL statements in an external XML file and assign id's to them. You may reference these SQL statements by id in your code, replace any named parameters, and then have Mapsicle execute them for you. This is how iBATIS does it, but in retrospect, it is not the best approach. I have no motivation to improve the software as I no longer write much PHP, so an update will not be forthcoming.

Mapsicle will map a SQL select statement's results to an object or list of objects (although, the option to map to a list of hash maps is available as well). There's no need to work with result sets or manage database connections; all the configuration is done through an XML file. You may use Mapsicle to execute update, delete, and insert statements as well.

Note: This project is no longer being developed.

Mapsicle depends on the following PEAR packages, so make sure you have them installed. Either get your system administrator to install them, or follow a guide to install PEAR on a shared host.

• Config v1.10.6 (http://pear.php.net/package/Config)
• DB v1.7.6 (http://pear.php.net/package/DB)
• PEAR v1.4.6 (http://pear.php.net/package/PEAR)

You can build the library with Phing, or you can just copy the contents of the src directory somewhere in your include_path. Add this code to any script that uses Mapsicle:

ini_set('include_path', '/path/to/Mapsicle'
  . PATH_SEPARATOR
  . ini_get('include_path'));
require_once('Mapsicle.php');

Next, you must create a mapsicle.xml file and put it anywhere. This file contains your SQL maps as well as your database configuration. Here's a sample file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mapsicle>
  <datasource>
    <property name="phptype"  value="mysql"/>
    <property name="hostspec" value="localhost"/>
    <property name="database" value="test"/>
    <property name="username" value="mapsicle"/>
    <property name="password" value="mapsicle"/>
  </datasource>
  <select id="Customer.findById" delimiter="#">
    select  id          as id,
      cust_first        as firstName,
      cust_last         as lastName,
      cust_email        as email
    from Customer
      where   id        = #id#
  </select>
</mapsicle>

Note that you may have <insert>, <update>, and <delete> elements as well, for statements of those types. Your id can be any string, but it's customary to use the object name followed by the operation name. The delimiter tells Mapsicle that the literal between the delimiter is a named parameter.

Just build a mapsicle object and begin using it:

$sqlmap   =& MapsicleFactory::createMapsicle("mapsicle.xml");
$customer =  $sqlmap->queryForObject("Customer.findById", array("id" => 3));
echo "Customer ID: "           . $customer->id . "<br/>";
echo "Customer's first name: " . $customer->firstName . "<br/>";
echo "Customer's last name: "  . $customer->lastName . "<br/>";
echo "Customer's email: "      . $customer->email . "<br/>";

See the USAGE docs for more information.