huge zend framework project and where to place models

Question

We have a huge Zend Framework project, it's basically a website in 4 different languages and with a fair amount of pages. Usually my application handle 10~15 database tables and probably 5/6 controllers so I place all my model under applications/models.

The problem with that project doing the same would make copy the same models in each modules and probably make a lot of duplicate code and make the maintenance being difficult. I am wondering if it would wise to puts the models under library?

How do you people are doing in such case? some solutions, I am thinking of in my order of preference

put models and shared code under /library
make a common module and play with the auto loading to load this classes from any modules
dirty but possible setup some symbolic links so the files in models come all from the same source ... but probably bad

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 22 '11 at 14:48

I keep all library code, including models, under /library. IMO, that's what it's there for. Then, if you need to share libraries (incl. models) between apps, you can do so with a single symlink or git submodule:

Your local app:

/myapp/application/
/myapp/public/
/myapp/library/
/myapp/library/MyApp/

Pulling in external dependencies:

/myapp/library/OtherLib (git submodule of a separate repo)
/myapp/library/ExtraLib (symlink to /path/to/ExtraLib/)

Or:

set_include_path(get_include_path() . ':/path/to/ExtraLib')

If you separate models from the library, you'd have two mount points for every dependency.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 22 '11 at 14:55

This is how I typically structure my application, although I have stored them in the library folder in other projects. I prefer this structure over storing them in the library as Models are application specific, whereas my library is used to store application-less(?) classes (typical Auth, Filters etc)

/application
    /models
        // Models
    /modules
        /default
            /controllers
                // Default Controllers
        /admin
            /controllers
                // Admin Controllers
/library
    // Library Classes

huge zend framework project and where to place models

2 Answers2