About¶
“Whyte Model” is a set of two abstract classes used as a base for model layer implementation in Zend Framework. It was made with two things in mind:
- Define your model once per project, and then be able to check its instances for validity anywhere. Be it POST data, parsed xml or external database input.
- Manage forms without Zend_Form. Again, if you face an already coded html-template with complex forms, you will be getting hard times tailoring Zend_Form to output exactly the markup you need. Whyte Model doesn’t mess with markup (in fact it doesn’t render anything) but can validate and repopulate the form.
- Legacy Database Structures, where you rather map objects to existing table columns, but avoid using their original names like $this->tbl_something along with bare Zend_DB_Table_Row
Installation¶
These are the steps for a unix-system. As they are trivial, one should be fine following them on Windows.
Navigate to your ZF-project’s library folder. It should be on include_path basically:
cd myzfproject/library
Note
Whyte Model assumes you have Zend Autoloader employed.
Now let git make the folder and download the package into it:
git clone git://github.com/yentsun/Whyte.git
If your project follows the recommended structure, in your application/configs/application.ini add autoloadernamespaces for class autoloading:
autoloadernamespaces.whyte = "Whyte_"
Or you can simply add a require statement where appropriate.
Done! You now can inherit Whyte_Model_Entity and Whyte_Model_Mapper classes in your models/mappers:
<?php
class Application_Model_Something extends Whyte_Model_Entity {
...
}
Read on: