codeigniter-base-model

My CodeIgniter Base Model is an extended CI_Model class to use in your CodeIgniter applications. It provides a full CRUD base to make developing database interactions easier and quicker. It also includes a bunch of other cool stuff, including before and after create callbacks, validation and a some table name guessing.

Synopsis

class Post_model extends MY_Model { }

$this->load->model('post_model', 'post');

$this->post->get_all();

$this->post->get(1);
$this->post->get_by('title', 'Pigs CAN Fly!');
$this->post->get_many_by('status', 'open');

$this->post->insert(array(
    'status' => 'open',
    'title' => "I'm too sexy for my shirt"
));

$this->post->update(1, array( 'status' => 'closed' ));

$this->post->delete(1);

Usage

Drag the MY_Model.php file into your application/core folder. CodeIgniter will load and initialise this class automatically for you. Extend all your model classes from MY_Model and all the functionality will be baked into your models automatically.

Naming Conventions

This class will try to guess the name of the table to use, by guessing the plural of the class name. If the table name isn't the plural and you need to set it to something else, just declare the $_table instance variable and set it to the table name. Some of the CRUD functions also assume that your primary key ID column is called 'id'. You can overwrite this functionality by setting the $primary_key instance variable.

Callbacks

There are many times when you'll need to alter your model data before it's inserted or returned. This could be adding timestamps, pulling in relationships or deleting dependent rows. The MVC pattern states that these sorts of operations need to go in the model. In order to facilitate this, MY_Model contains a series of callbacks -- methods that will be called at certain points.

The full list of callbacks are as follows:

• $before_create
• $after_create
• $before_update
• $after_update
• $before_get
• $after_get
• $before_delete
• $after_delete

These are instance variables usually defined at the class level. They are arrays of methods on this class to be called at certain points. An example:

class Book_model extends MY_Model
{
    public $before_create = array( 'timestamps' );
    
    protected function timestamps($book)
    {
        $book['created_at'] = $book['updated_at'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
    }
}

Validation

This class also includes some excellent validation support. This uses the built-in Form Validation library and provides a wrapper around it to make validation automatic on insert. To enable, set the $validate instance variable to the rules array that you would pass into $this->form_validation->set_rules(). To find out more about the rules array, please view the library's documentation.

Then, for each call to insert(), the data passed through will be validated according to the $validate rules array. Unlike the CodeIgniter validation library, this won't validate the POST data, rather, it validates the data passed directly through.

If for some reason you'd like to skip the validation, you can call skip_validation() before the call to insert() and validation won't be performed on the data for that single call.

Arrays vs Objects

By default, MY_Model is setup to return objects using CodeIgniter's QB's row() and result() methods. If you'd like to use their array counterparts, there are a couple of ways of customising the model.

If you'd like all your calls to use the array methods, you can set the $return_type variable to array.

class Book_model extends MY_Model
{
    protected $return_type = 'array';
}

If you'd like just your next call to return a specific type, there are two scoping methods you can use:

$this->book_model->as_array()
                 ->get(1);
$this->book_model->as_object()
                 ->get_by('column', 'value');

Unit Tests

MY_Model contains a robust set of unit tests to ensure that the system works as planned.

Currently, the tests only run on PHP5.4 or 5.3.

Install PHPUnit. I'm running version 3.6.10.

Then, simply run the phpunit command on the test file:

$ phpunit tests/MY_Model_test.php

Other Documentation

• Jeff Madsen has written an excellent tutorial about the basics (and triggered me updating the documentation here). Read it now, you lovely people.

Contributors

Thanks to:

• Phil Sturgeon
• Dan Horrigan
• Adam Jackett

...who have all contributed a great amount of code and ideas to this MY_Model.

Changelog

Version 1.3.0 - IN DEVELOPMENT

• Added support for array return types using $return_type variable and as_array() and as_object() methods
• Added PHP5.3 support for the test suite
• Removed the deprecated MY_Model() constructor
• Fixed an issue with after_create callbacks (thanks zbrox!)

Version 1.2.0

• Bugfix to update_many()
• Added getters for table name and skip validation
• Fix to callback functionality (thanks titosemi!)
• Vastly improved documentation
• Added a get_next_id() method (thanks gbaldera!)
• Added a set of unit tests
• Added support for Composer

Version 1.0.0 - 1.1.0

• Initial Releases