CodeIgniter, models, and ORM, how to deal with this?

Question

I\'m starting with CodeIgniter and after several hours diving in Google I\'m a bit confused.

Let\'s try to explain my question with a easy example: I have a table \'car

Answer 1

What you want to do is create a library that extends the ActiveRecord class. Some people are ahead of you:

http://codeigniter.com/wiki/ActiveRecord_Class/

good mods in the thread, here:

http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/101987/

If you're looking for ORM methods that are general to your app, just extend the ActiveRecord class. For my application, knowing the structure of a table allows me to scaffold (auto-generate) forms, and do other mapping. I do API-to-API mapping, so I include a GetStructure() method in MyActiveRecord and build other things from there.

(RoR snickering can bugger off now)

Edit: while I am a fan of the scope and power of Doctrine, I think it's demand for command-line usage places it beyond the spirit of CI. What's right for you is what's right for you, but if I'm going to use Doctrine, I might as well use Symfony, right? Or RoR, for that matter, right?? See where I'm gong with this? Right tool for the right time.

Answer 2

Try with Doctrine, is a great ORM and can be easily integrated in CodeIgniter.

Answer 3

I had good luck with using Propel with codeigniter.

Answer 4

check out GAS ORM it sounds pretty good, handy and easy to use. some features of this ORM implementation for CodeIgniter:

• Supported databases : cubrid, mssql, mysql, oci8, odbc, postgre, sqlite, sqlsrv. (including PDO, if you keep sync with CI repo)
• Support multiple database connections.
• Support multiple relationships.
• Support composite keys (for key that define relationships).
• Auto-create models from database tables and vice versa.
• Auto-synchronize models-tables by creating migrations file.
• Per-request caching.
• Self-referential and adjacency column/data (hierarchical data).
• Eager Loading to maximize your relationship queries (for performance manner).
• Various finder methods (can chained with most of CI AR) and aggregates.
• Validation and auto-mapping input collection with minimal setup.
• Hooks points to control over your model.
• Extensions to share your common function/library across your model.
• Transactions and other CI AR goodness.
• Included phpunit test suite to ensure most of API consistency.

there is one form with spark support -> so it's easy to install