I know, you may say: “why another PHP ORM? There are so many of them!”. And I would agree, but I've been looking for an ORM that would fit my needs and I haven't found it. So I've written one.

• CRUD manipulation:

  • Create:

    $object = new Class(<attributes>);
    $object->save();

    or

    $object = Class::create(<attributes>);

  • Read:

    Class::find(<options>);

    (and its derivated: Class::findByPK(), Class::all(), Class::first(), Class::last(), Class::one())

  • Update:

    $object->myAttr = $myValue;
    $obeect->save();

    or

    $object->set(<attributes>)
    $object->save();

    for several attributes in a row.

  • Delete:

    $object->delete();

    or

    Class::remove(<conditions>);

• Model relationships:

  • belongs_to, has_one, has_many, many_many;
  • conditions on relations;
  • order by in *_many relations.

Write no SQL anymore. There is no need, not once, to write SQL, even for complex searches.

• Conditions can be made through a model arborescence:

  'conditions' => array(
      'company/contacts/last_name' => 'Doe',
      ...
  ),

• Do not use methods to construct your query conditions: one array suffises:

  'conditions' => array(
      array(
          'company/contacts/first_name' => 'John',
          'company/contacts/last_name'  => 'Doe',
      ),
      'OR',
      array(
          'company/contacts/first_name' => 'Paul',
          'company/contacts/last_name'  => 'Smith',
      ),
  ),

  But you can do better. Check this out:

  'conditions' => array(
      'company/contacts/first_name,last_name' => array(array('John', 'Doe'), array('Paul', 'Smith')),
  ),

  Great, isn't it?

• Order your result by a related model's attribute:

  'order_by' => 'company/director/last_name',

• Order your result by a COUNT:

  'order_by' => array('#contacts' => 'DESC'),

One of the strenghts of this ORM is that it can be used on top of any database. I mean that if, for example, you have to use a really ugly database schema, this ORM is perfect. With combination of a few features of it, you can abstract in a very clean way your schema.

• Attribute to column translation: In the model column definition array you can change columns' names for a more fitting ones.

  protected static $_columns = array(
      'first_name', // Column is named "first_name" and it is a good one.
      'last_name',
      'age' => 'years_since_birth', // Column "years_since_birth" of
                                    // database table will be named "age" in our model.
      ...
  );

• Callbacks at every important step of interaction with database (Names are meaningful):

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

• Handling functions for conditions on virtual attributes.

• Optional getters and setters;
• Optional count getters;
• Model attributes filters: an easy way to manage attributes you want to retrieve from DB;
• Scopes;

SimpleAR requires the following:

• PHP 5.3 or higher.

1. Just copy lib/ folder content anywhere in your code (a libraries/SimpleAR/ folder sounds good, for example).

2. Include SimpleAR.php with some basic configuration:

   include 'libraries/SimpleAR/SimpleAR.php';
   
   $cfg = new SimpleAR\Config();
   $cfg->dsn = array(
       'driver'   => DB_DRIVER,
       'host'     => DB_HOST,
       'name'     => DB_NAME,
       'user'     => DB_USER,
       'password' => DB_PASS,
   );
   
   // Note trailing slash.
   $cfg->modelDirectory  = 'path/to/any/directory_you_want/'; // You can pass
                                                              // an array too.
   
   $app = new SimpleAR($config);

3. No, there is no third step; It's done!

To use SimpleAR functionalities, simply make your model classes extends SimpleAR's Model class:

<?php

class MyModel extends SimpleAR\Model
{
}

You are done.

There are several available configuration options you can modify the same way as shown in Installation - step two.

All of them are describe in documentation.

Most simple case:

class User extends SimpleAR\Model
{
}

Conventions:

• User database table will be named according to Config::classToTable item. By default, it applies the PHP strtolower() function. So, here our table is supposed to be named “user”.

• Table primary key will be named according to Config::primaryKey item. By default, it is “id”.

You can still explicitly set your values:

class User extends SimpleAR\Model
{
    // Database table name.
    protected static $_tableName = 'users';

    // Table primary key.
    protected static $_primaryKey = array('id');
}

If you don't specify them, columns will be retrieved thanks to a SHOW COLUMNS query. I recommend to specify them, it will save one database query for each loaded model:

class User extends SimpleAR\Model
{
    ...

    protected static $_columns = array(
        'last_name',
        'first_name',
        'age',
    );
}

You can set a different name for your attribute if column name does not suit you:

class User extends SimpleAR\Model
{
    ...

    protected static $_columns = array(
        'last_name',
        'first_name',
        // “age” will be used for “years_since_birth” column.
        'age' => 'years_since_birth',
    );
}