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We are developing a substantial PHP web application using the Zend framework.

At this time, the product is starting to stabilize and we are moving away from quick-and-dirty setups in order to avoid regressions. In particular, we are now working on top of a single shared database that everyone edits. We want to get rid of this ASAP.

The Zend framework does not seem to support the classic RAD (Djangoish) mechanism where you define your data models and then it creates the tables for you. So we are thinking of using an external ORM tool that will do this.

We could have our schemas and initial fixtures defined in plain SQL but this is a) verbose b) error prone c) too low level and d) problematic because we must maintain different versions for every supported database backend.

So we are thinking of using an ORM like Doctrine or Propel to define our models and create tables with their initial data using the chosen framework's dialect. The application uses the Zend tool for ORMing so consistency between both tools would have to be maintained manually, but since changes are more gradual now this doesn't seem like much of a problem.

So, far, we are evaluating Doctrine and Propel for this task. Any suggestions about other ORMs that we missed? Maybe a different approach altogether for the task at hand?

Thanks!

Gonzalo

GomoX
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    Just for future reference. We ended up using Rails' ActiveRecord with a module called [standalone-migrations](https://github.com/thuss/standalone-migrations). The tools works great, but distributing along with a PHP app is a pain. Windows support is pretty annoying as well, since installing Ruby on Windows sucks quite a bit. We plan on developing our own equivalent tool in PHP. – GomoX Nov 10 '11 at 19:51
  • We ended up using Doctrine's, but it's not really good either. See here for more information: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9946585/are-doctrine-migrations-usable-in-production-applications?lq=1 – GomoX Dec 04 '13 at 20:45

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I really love RedBean. You keep your database models in pure php and it keeps track of everything.

RedBeanPHP is an open source ORM tool for PHP. It focuses on simplicity and ease of use. What makes RedBean unique is that it creates your database schema on-the-fly. It scans your data and adjusts the column types to fit your object properties. If your models are stabilized you can freeze the database. This way RedBean is easy to develop with but is also extremely fast on production servers.

Since I've found this ORM, I don't use doctrine any more.

http://redbeanphp.com/

Byron Whitlock
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  • Fully agree. Redbeans allows to completely internalize your data objects/schemas definitions the way you want, and is very lightweight in terms of maintenance and configuration. No need to maintain the SQL database when using RedBeans. – Yann Sep 19 '14 at 12:24