fORMDatabase

The fORMDatabase class provides database-related functionality to the Flourish ORM. End-developers will use the class to attach fDatabase objects for the rest of ORM.

fDatabase Registry

Since an ORM by definition maps objects to a database, it is obvious that an instance of the fDatabase class will be needed for all database operations. To make an instance of fDatabase available to all of the ORM classes, pass it to the static method attach().

fORMDatabase::attach(new fDatabase('postgresql', 'database', 'username', 'password'));

When writing code for the ORM that requires use of the database class, the static method retrieve() will return the instance set with attach().

$result = fORMDatabase::retrieve()->translatedQuery("SELECT * FROM users");

Multiple Database Support

Multiple databases are support by the Flourish ORM, both in master-slave and vertical partitioning setups.

Vertical Partitioning

Vertical partitioning is when different tables are split up over multiple databases or servers. For instance, perhaps all users and permissions are stored on one database server and all orders and products are stored on another.

In this type of a setup, it is possible to attach more than one databases for the ORM by passing a second parameter, $name, to the static method attach().

// Attach the users db as the default
fORMDatabase::attach($users_db);
// Attach the ecommerce db with the name "ecommerce_db"
fORMDatabase::attach($ecommerce_db, 'ecommerce_db');

Now individual classes can be mapped to the database by calling fORM::mapClassToDatabase().

fORM::mapClassToDatabase('User', 'ecommerce_db');

Master-Slave Setups

When a database cluster is set up to use a master-slave setup, one database will be designated the master and one or more as slaves. Flourish allows for such a setup with attach() by specifying the third parameter, $role. The $role parameter defaults to both, which means the server will be used for reading and writing. To attach the master server, set the $role to write. For the slave, set the $role to read.

// Attach the master for writing and a slave for reading
fORMDatabase::attach($master_db, 'default', 'write');
fORMDatabase::attach($random_slave_db, 'default', 'read');

It is also possible to combine vertical partitioning with master-slave setups by specifying a $name for the database other than default.

As implied by the slave database variable $random_slave_db in the code example, attach() will not accept multiple databases for the read role and random pick one. For setups where there is more than one slave, code must be manually written to select a slave and provide it to the attach() method.