Review: the AbstractModel class's source code - PHP

Before I proceed to define the set of chainable methods that will be tasked with creating the SELECT MIN, SELECT SUM and SELECT AVG sections of a SQL statement respectively, I’m going to reintroduce the complete source code of the “AbstractModel” class as it was in the previous article. 

Here’s the class in question:

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2008 Simon Stenhouse

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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class AbstractModel

{

protected $table = '';

protected $fields = array();

protected $validation = array();

protected $error_prefix = '<p>';

protected static $instance = NULL;

protected $ci = NULL;

protected $db = NULL;

// Factory method that creates a singleton model object

public static function factory($model)

{

if (self::$instance == NULL)

{

$model = ucfirst($model);

self::$instance = new $model;

}

return self::$instance;

}

// Constructor

public function __construct()

{

$this->ci = & get_instance();

$this->db = $this->ci->db;

$table = strtolower(get_class($this)) . 's';

if ($this->db->table_exists($table))

{

$this->table = $table;

$this->fields = $this->db->field_names($this->table);

}

else

{

return;

}

}

// Sets a new property for the model

function __set($property, $value)

{

if(in_array($property, array_merge($this->fields, array('error', 'result')), TRUE))

{

$this->$property = $value;

}

}

// Gets the value of an existing property of the model

function __get($property)

{

if(isset($this->$property))

{

return $this->$property;

}

return NULL;

}

// Fetches rows from specified table

public function fetch($limit = NULL, $offset = NULL)

{

$data = array();

foreach ($this->fields as $field)

{

if (isset($this->$field) AND $this->$field != '')

{

$data[$field] = $this->$field;

}

}

$query = !empty($data) ? $this->db->get_where($this->table, $data, $limit, $offset) : $this->db->get($this->table, $limit, $offset);

if ($query->num_rows() > 0)

{

$this->result = $query->result();

return $this;

}

$this->error = 'No rows were returned.';

return FALSE;

}

// Inserts a new row into the specified database table

public function save()

{

$data = array();

foreach ($this->fields as $field)

{

if (isset($this->$field))

{

$data[$field] = $this->$field;

}

}

// if there is any data available go ahead and save/update row

if( !empty($data))

{

// validate input data

if ($this->validate($data) === FALSE)

{

$this->error = $this->get_error_string();

return FALSE;

}

// if id property has been set in the controller update existing row

if ( !empty($this->id))

{

// Update existing record

$this->db->where('id', $this->id);

$this->db->update($this->table, $data);

}

else

{

// otherwise insert new row

$this->db->insert($this->table, $data);

$this->id = $this->db->insert_id();

}

return TRUE;

}

$this->error = 'No valid data was provided to save row.';

return FALSE;

}

// Deletes a row

public function delete()

{

if (isset($this->id))

{

$this->db->where('id', $this->id);

$this->db->delete($this->table);

return TRUE;

}

$this->error = 'Error deleting row.';

return FALSE;

}

// Builds SELECT part of the query

public function select($select = '*', $protect_identifiers = TRUE)

{

if ($select != '*' AND !empty($select))

{

$select = explode(',', $select);

foreach ($select as $key => $field)

{

if ( !in_array($field, $this->fields, TRUE))

{

unset($select[$key]);

}

}

$select = !empty($select) ? $select : '*';

}

$this->db->select($select, $protect_identifiers);

return $this;

}

// Builds the select MAX part of the query

public function select_max($field, $alias = '')

{

if (in_array($field, $this->fields, TRUE))

{

$this->db->select_max($field, $alias);

}

return $this;

}

}

Despite its rather lengthy source code, the above model class is pretty easy to follow. Its methods are very modular and perform well-differentiated tasks. Logically, its strongest point is the implementation of several methods that can be easily chained to each other to create different portions of a query.

Well, now that you remember how the “AbstractModel” class does its thing, it’s time to continue extending its existing functionality. In the section to come I’m going to define three new chainable methods, which will be used for calculating the minimal, average and sum values of a database table column.

To learn more about how these methods will be implemented, click on the link below and read the next few lines.