codeigniter: where do entities go?

Question

I was wondering what should I do with my entities? For example, a class named Articles, with a few datamembers (name/title/date) and getters & setters. I could add these to my Articles datamember, but it's better practice to seperate those. So what do you think?

Thanks!

What do you mean by saying "I could add these to my Articles datamember, but it's better practice to seperate those"? I suppose you should extend your Article class from Model class (http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/models.html) and go on. — Darmen Amanbay, Sep 10 '10 at 10:36
by that i mean adding the datamembers to the model, like on the example, but is it not better to separate entities? — , Sep 10 '10 at 11:51
It sounds like you're talking about what CodeIgniter considers a "model", in the model-view-controller paradigm — user229044, Sep 13 '10 at 16:24
To avoid any confusion from @maegar comment, what Sled describes is NOT a codeigniter (or MVC) 'model'. An MVC model will contain business logic and is much more than just an entity class. — charliefortune, Jun 24 '13 at 12:34

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 13 '10 at 16:20

i usually do this:

1.- create my entity classes in /system/application/classes

class MyEntity {
}

2.- define a constant to point to that folder on /system/application/config/constants.php

define('CLASSES_DIR', APPPATH . "classes/");

3.- include the entities classes from the models:

require_once(CLASSES_DIR  . "MyEntity.php");

class MyModel extends Model {

   function test() {
      $entity = new MyEntity();
      $entity->doSomeStuff();
   }

}

That won't break your mvc structure, and keeps for entities classes separated. Hope that helps!

This seems like the best solution. I asked this question recently at http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/166650/ but didn't get any solid replies. — DisgruntledGoat, Sep 14 '10 at 10:13

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 07 '16 at 17:12

4

I liked @ilbesculpi's solution, but I customized it a bit using a namespace rather than using a constant and require_once. Here is my version:

1) Create my entity classes in /system/application/entities.

namespace MyApplication\Entities;

class ArticlesEntity
{
    function doSomeStuff()
    {
        // Your code here...
    }
}

2) Include my entity class in my model via a using statement.

use MyApplication\Entities\ArticlesEntity;

class ArticlesModel extends CI_Model
{
    function test() 
    {
      $entity = new ArticlesEntity();
      $ArticlesEntity->doSomeStuff();
    }
}

answered Jan 07 '16 at 17:12

Tod Birdsall

17,877
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1

In my opinion, this is more elegant solution. However, I think it needs some autoloading mechanism like PSR-4. – MÇT Aug 10 '16 at 08:39
1

CodeIgniter4 will have support for working with entities: https://codeigniter4.github.io/CodeIgniter4/models/entities.html – Gfy Apr 13 '19 at 12:45

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 10 '10 at 15:07

1

CodeIgniter models use the singleton pattern. You can create libraries or use $foo = new Some_Model if you like, remember that its all just PHP :)

answered Sep 10 '10 at 15:07

Phil Sturgeon

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Doesn't really work well if you want, say, a list of products. All you are doing is creating a function collection. – DisgruntledGoat Sep 14 '10 at 09:55
Right, CodeIgniter models are generally dumb, thin, singletons. But you can use plain old PHP to do things however you like. – Phil Sturgeon Sep 14 '10 at 13:11

codeigniter: where do entities go?

3 Answers3