Lachlan's Automatic PHP Object to SQL (LAPOS)

This is a quickstart guide to use the LAPOS framework for this assignment. LAPOS allows you to build objects as PHP classes, and without writing any SQL, tables will be built, objects can be saved to sql and updated. This was a framework built for a university group I was in to use. It needs a lot of work to be worth using as a whole, (which I might attempt in future if I have time), however I do think the unique method at automatically generating the table columns from normal PHP object properties is something worthwile.

Constraints:

There are a couple key constraints/limitations to the system:

• all objects will have their primary key be an int column called id

• all foriegn key references can only link to the primairy key ID of another object.

• all strings have a 512 character max and are stored as VARHCAR(512); this will be improved at some point soon

• Only the following datatypes are supported:

  PHP	SQL
  String	VARCHAR(512)
  INTEGER	INTEGER
  FLOAT	FLOAT
  BOOLEAN	BOOLEAN
  DATETIME	DATETIME

Examples

check out reservation.php for a well documented example on how to setup an object

The sql object

the sql object is what is used to interact with SQL. Create an instance of it, if it successfully connects then you can use these.

• getObjects(string $class, string $WhereClause = "")
  • $class: input the class followed by ::Class(), (eg Customer::Class())
  • $WhereClause: pass in a where statement to filter the request eg WHERE id = 5, this is standard SQL where statements.
  • This function allows you to pass a class into it, with a WHERE statement to filter the request. It fetches all objects based on your WHERE statement, forms them into PHP objects and returns an array of them. So $sql->getobjects(Customer::Class(),"WHERE id = 5") will return an array with one entry, the customer with an id of 5.
• buildTableFromObject(string $object)
  • input the class followed by ::Class(), (eg Customer::Class())
  • this only needs to be run once, it builds the table for the class based on what you define inside the PHP class.
• saveObject(sqlObject $object)
  • $object: input an instance of a sqlObject that you want to save to the database
  • Saves a sqlObject to SQL, if it has an ID already, it will try to update the record with that ID, if there is no ID set in the object, it will insert a new record with the data, and give the sqlObject the ID of the new record.

Setup

LAPOS was designed and tested with Appache and MySQL in mind. Other systems may work but have had no testing. Create a copy of the template config file in core/config and specific the database config info. Begin building objects inside the core/objects folder. 3 example objects have been provided, with detailed comments explaining how to use this system. There is also an object called sqlObject, all objects that you would like to use this system should extend it. The example objects can be deleted, however the sqlObject must not be. All objects you create should be stored within the objects folder.

Validate Setup

• go to test.php to ensure everything is configured. If all green you should be good to go :)
• For an example of how to create objects, look at /core/objects/reservation.php
• This test file can be deleted