= PHP Active Record Class =
{{{
#!NewsFlash
 = This page needs an update! = Beware that the code listed here has numerous bugs and is only intended for research purposes. Please [wiki:contactMe contact me] if you are interested in a newer, more polished version.
}}}

I had seen and heard a lot about [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_record_pattern Active Record] and wanted to have some fun with it. As I'm mostly a PHP guy, I decided to roll out my own class. This is what I came up with. It never really made it to ''production'' so it's probably a bit rough, but I've learned a lot about the internals of AR and frankly, had a lot of fun programming this. It has support for renderer class extensions (ie: to generate an xml output), in model validation functions, etc. I've used the occasion to get accustomed with [http://xdebug.org/ xDebug], the PHP remote debugger. You can view a live example [http://code.mlalonde.net/dbtmp/v2.php here] (reload to see the effect).

'''Note that this is test code and the errors are expected for debugging'''. See attached file for the source.

== Usage Example ==
{{{
#!php
<?php
/**
 * Define a table model
**/
class activeRecordTest extends tableAbstract
{
	public $rootXPath = '/appData/pageData';
	
	function __construct(tableRenderer &$renderer = null)
	{
		$this->_init(__CLASS__, $renderer);
	}
	
	protected	function onCreate()
	{
		$tableName	= $this->myName;
		$tableSQL	= <<<SQL
CREATE TABLE `${tableName}` (
  `id` mediumint(8) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `login` varchar(128) character set latin1 NOT NULL,
  `password` varchar(45) character set latin1 NOT NULL,
  `email` varchar(255) character set latin1 NOT NULL,
  `created` datetime NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=0 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci
SQL;
		
		return $tableSQL;
	}
		
	public	function loginExists($login)
	{
		if ($this->fetchRow(HP('limit', 1)) > 0) return true;
		else return false;
	}
	
	/**
	 * Custom, auto-called, field validation function
	**/
	protected function validate_login($data)
	{
		if (rand(0, 1) == 0) return true;
		else return false;
	}
} // END table model Pages


$myTest				= new activeRecordTest(new xmlRenderer);
$myTest->login		= 'User';
$myTest->password	= 'password';

// Use of a custom model method
echo 'User jdoe <b>' . (($iExists = $myTest->loginExists('jdoe')) ? 'exists' : 'doesn\'t exist') . "</b>\n";

if ($myTest->fetchAll() == 0 || !$iExists)
{
	$myTest->email		= 'jdoe@example.org';
	$myTest->password	= sha1('jdoe');
	$myTest->login		= 'jdoe';
	
	if ($myTest->saveData())
	{
		echo '<b>Saved data 1</b>' . "\n";
	} else {
		echo '<b style="color red">Failed to save 1</b>' . "\n";
	}
}

$myTest->fetchRows(HP('fieldName', '*'));
?>

<pre>

<h2>tableRenderer generated XML</h2><hr />

<?php

echo htmlentities($myTest->render(true));

?>
</pre>

}}}