Doctrine Relations and Data Fixtures

This episode of zendcasts will cover how we can write Data Fixtures and extend our data model to include a simple one-to-many using Doctrine’s schema.yml file. I also noticed in the code of my last example that Model loading wasn’t working properly. I cover the fix in the video, however I’d like to highlight it here too. In your _initDoctrine() method, make sure you load the models:

Doctrine::loadModels($doctrineConfig['models_path']);

also, I’d like to extend a welcome to the folks at ServerGrove Networks for sponsoring this episode of Zendcasts. ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc“. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Edit: I spoke to Guilherme Blanco (one of the core developers behind Doctrine) and he kindly brought up some things I should bear in mind for my Doctrine / Zend set.

Doctrine’s autoloader configuration can be scaled back by doing PEAR style Model Loading (new to 1.2). Also, you can use Doctrine_Core instead of Doctrine since everything has been moved to Doctrine_Core in order to follow Zend-style namespacing.

lastly, you can register your own CLI tasks as part of Doctrine’s CLI script or just write them in the scripts/doctrine.php file. With this, you could have your newly-generated models placed in the necessary folders. I’ll be experimenting with this in the coming week.