Working With Entities

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Entity classes can be named and namespaced however you want to set them up within your project structure. For the following examples, the Entities will just be prefixed with an Entity namespace for easy psr-0 compliant autoloading.

Defining An Entity

The minimal required definition of an entity defines the $table and the fields, and extends from Spot\Entity:

<?php
namespace Entity;
class Post extends \Spot\Entity
{
    protected static $table = 'posts';
    public static function fields()
    {
        return [
            'id'           => ['type' => 'integer', 'primary' => true, 'autoincrement' => true],
            'title'        => ['type' => 'string', 'required' => true],
            'body'         => ['type' => 'text', 'required' => true],
            'status'       => ['type' => 'integer', 'default' => 0, 'index' => true],
            'author_id'    => ['type' => 'integer', 'required' => true],
            'date_created' => ['type' => 'datetime', 'value' => new \DateTime()]
        ];
    }
}

Primary Keys

In the above “Post” entity, the primary key is defined on the id field with a 'primary' => true attribute on the field definition. If the primary key is also an auto-increment column, you must also add a 'autoincrement' => true attribute.

The full required definition looks like this:

'id' => ['type' => 'integer', 'primary' => true, 'autoincrement' => true]

Indexes

An index can be defined on an entity field by adding the 'index' => true attribute.

'status' => ['type' => 'integer', 'index' => true]

Many times, it is desirable to create a compound index with more than one column. In Spot, simply give the index attribute a name that is shared with another column, and a compound index will be created using all columns with the same index name.

'lat' => ['type' => 'decimal', 'index' => 'geolocation']
'lng' => ['type' => 'decimal', 'index' => 'geolocation']

Unique Columns

Similar to defining an index, you must add a 'unique' => true to specify a single field as requiring a unique value:

'email' => ['type' => 'string', 'required' => true, 'unique' => true]

And also just like normal indexes, compound unique indexes can be created by using a shared name:

'email'    => ['type' => 'string', 'required' => true, 'unique' => 'user_email']
'username' => ['type' => 'string', 'required' => true, 'unique' => 'user_email']

Required Fields

A required field can be enforced on save, create, and update using a 'required' => true attribute.

'email' => ['type' => 'string', 'required' => true]