Prendre un Café

Symfony 1.3 and 1.4 have been released some days ago in RC2 and you should really take a look at it, because they improve a lot the way you work with the framework, especially the forms one. It’s been a couple of days I started to implement a new bookmarks management feature on a project I’m working on currently, and the new model relationship embedding feature of 1.3’s forms framework just saved me a lot of days.

Here’s a quick and dirty example on how to setup a willingly simplistic bookmarks management system using it

The schema

Here’s the naive Doctrine schema I’ll use for this example:

 yaml
# in config/doctrine/schema.yml
User:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true
    name:
      type: string(255)
      notnull: true
  relations:
    Bookmarks:
      type: many
      class: Bookmark
      local: id
      foreign: user_id
      onDelete: CASCADE

Bookmark:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true
    name:
      type: string(255)
      notnull: true
    url:
      type: string(255)
      notnull: true
    user_id:
      type: integer(4)
      notnull: true
  relations:
    User:
      type: one
      local: user_id
      foreign: id

As you can see, it’s really naive. Anyway.

Some fixtures

What would be a Doctrine schema without fixtures? Quite nothing I guess, so here we go:

 yaml
# in data/fixtures/fixtures.yml
User:
  niko:
    name: niko

Bookmark:
  niko_bookmark1:
    User: niko
    name: Slashdot
    url: http://slashdot.org/
  niko_bookmark2:
    User: niko
    name: Delicious
    url: http://delicious.com/
  niko_bookmark3:
    User: niko
    name: Digg
    url: http://digg.com/

Building stuff

You guessed it, after having suited the config/databases.yml file to set up a database of our choice, we can now build the database, all the classes we need and load the previously defined fixtures:

$ ./symfony doctrine:build --all --and-load

A basic user’s bookmarks management form

What we want do do now is to manage one User’s bookmarks in a single form. Let’s do it now in a new UserBookmarksForm.class.php file where we’ll build a form extending the autogenerated UserForm one:

 php
<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/UserBookmarksForm.class.php
class UserBookmarksForm extends UserForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    // We don't want to edit the User object
    unset($this['name']);

    // Existing bookmark forms
    $this->embedRelation('Bookmarks');
    
    $this->widgetSchema->setNameFormat('user_bookmarks[%s]');
  }
}

All the magic is done by calling the embedRelation() method here: all BookmarkForm instances will be embedded and managed automatically in and by our form.

Let’s use a simple controller to manage the form^[1]:

 php
<?php
class testActions extends sfActions
{
  public function executeBookmarks(sfWebRequest $request)
  {
    $this->form = new UserBookmarksForm($user = Doctrine::getTable('User')->findOneByName('niko'));
    if ($request->isMethod('post') && $this->form->bindAndSave($request->getParameter('user_bookmarks')))
    {
      $this->getUser()->setFlash('notice', 'Bookmarks list updated');
      $this->redirect('test/index');
    }
  }
}

And a basic template:

 php
<form action="." method="post">
  <?php echo $form->renderHiddenFields() ?>
  <?php echo $form->renderGlobalErrors() ?>
  <table>
    <?php echo $form ?>
    <tr>
      <td></td>
      <td><input type="submit"/></td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>

You should see something like this:

The form is functional, you can edit several bookmarks at one. Neat? But wait, we can’t add a new one!

Embedding a bookmark creation form

Let’s enhance our form by embedding an empty BookmarkForm form instance in order to add a new bookmark:

 php
<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/UserBookmarksForm.class.php
class UserBookmarksForm extends UserForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    unset($this['name']);
    
    // Bookmark creation form
    $newBookmarkForm = new BookmarkForm();
    $newBookmarkForm->setDefault('user_id', $this->object->id);
    $this->embedForm('new', $newBookmarkForm);
    
    // Existing bookmark forms
    $this->embedRelation('Bookmarks');
    
    $this->widgetSchema->setNameFormat('user_bookmarks[%s]');
  }
  
  protected function doBind(array $values)
  {
    if ('' === trim($values['new']['name']) && '' === trim($values['new']['url']))
    {
      unset($values['new'], $this['new']);
    }
    
    parent::doBind($values);
  }
}

Here I just override the doBind() method to remove the bookmark creation embedded form if nothing has been submitted by the user in its fields; that’s probably because he just wants to edit existing bookmarks^[2].

By refreshing the page you should now be able to see the new form:

So now you’re able to add a new Bookmark and/or edit existing instances within the same simple form. Neat? Wait, we can’t delete existing bookmarks!

Deleting existing bookmarks

So you would like to have a checkbox next to every existing bookmark embedded form to schedule its deletion on saving the form? Wow, that’s getting tricky, I like that.

The Symfony forms framework has evolved a lot, but what we’re trying to achieve here will involve some fine-tunning. Don’t be too much afraid seeing the code

First, we’ll have to add the checkbox widget to the BookmarkForm form, but only if an existing Bookmark object has been bound to it:

 php
<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/BookmarkForm.class.php
class BookmarkForm extends BaseBookmarkForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    $this->widgetSchema['user_id'] = new sfWidgetFormInputHidden();
    $this->validatorSchema['url'] = new sfValidatorAnd(array(
      new sfValidatorString(array('max_length' => 255)),
      new sfValidatorUrl(),
    ));
    
    if ($this->object->exists())
    {
      $this->widgetSchema['delete'] = new sfWidgetFormInputCheckbox();
      $this->validatorSchema['delete'] = new sfValidatorPass();
    }
  }
}

Refreshing the form page should display something like that:

The UserBookmarksForm now holds this code:

 php
<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/UserBookmarksForm.class.php
class UserBookmarksForm extends UserForm
{
  /**
   * Bookmarks scheduled for deletion
   * @var array
   */
  protected $scheduledForDeletion = array();  
  
  /**
   * Configures the form
   *
   */
  public function configure()
  {
    unset($this['name']);
    
    // Bookmark creation form
    $newBookmarkForm = new BookmarkForm();
    $newBookmarkForm->setDefault('user_id', $this->object->id);
    $this->embedForm('new', $newBookmarkForm);
    
    // Existing bookmark forms
    $this->embedRelation('Bookmarks');
    
    $this->widgetSchema->setNameFormat('user_bookmarks[%s]');
  }
  
  /**
   * Here we just drop the bookmark embedded creation form if no value has been 
   * provided for it (it somewhat simulates a non-required embedded form)
   *
   * @see sfForm::doBind()
   */
  protected function doBind(array $values)
  {
    if ('' === trim($values['new']['name']) && '' === trim($values['new']['url']))
    {
      unset($values['new'], $this['new']);
    }
    
    if (isset($values['Bookmarks']))
    {
      foreach ($values['Bookmarks'] as $i => $bookmarkValues)
      {
        if (isset($bookmarkValues['delete']) && $bookmarkValues['id'])
        {
          $this->scheduledForDeletion[$i] = $bookmarkValues['id'];
        }
      }
    }
    
    parent::doBind($values);
  }
  
  /**
   * Updates object with provided values, dealing with evantual relation deletion
   *
   * @see sfFormDoctrine::doUpdateObject()
   */
  protected function doUpdateObject($values)
  {
    if (count($this->scheduledForDeletion))
    {
      foreach ($this->scheduledForDeletion as $index => $id)
      {
        unset($values['Bookmarks'][$index]);
        unset($this->object['Bookmarks'][$index]);
        Doctrine::getTable('Bookmark')->findOneById($id)->delete();
      }
    }

    $this->getObject()->fromArray($values);
  }
  
  /**
   * Saves embedded form objects.
   *
   * @param mixed $con   An optional connection object
   * @param array $forms An array of forms
   */
  public function saveEmbeddedForms($con = null, $forms = null)
  {
    if (null === $con)
    {
      $con = $this->getConnection();
    }

    if (null === $forms)
    {
      $forms = $this->embeddedForms;
    }
    
    foreach ($forms as $form)
    {
      if ($form instanceof sfFormObject)
      {
        if (!in_array($form->getObject()->getId(), $this->scheduledForDeletion))
        {
          $form->saveEmbeddedForms($con);
          $form->getObject()->save($con);
        }
      }
      else
      {
        $this->saveEmbeddedForms($con, $form->getEmbeddedForms());
      }
    }
  }
}

The code should be self-explanatory… or not. But anyway, you should now be able to add a new bookmark and delete existing ones as well, in a single form and process, and we’re still using the very same controller from the beginning!

Okay, let’s admit it, we’re reaching the limits of Symfony and probably those of my knowledge of it as well, but… IT WORKS.

But, what about the templating?

As of now we’ve used the convenient <?php echo $form ?> trick, but we now want to have full fine-grained control over the way our embedded form fields will look like.

Let’s update the form template accordingly:

 php
<form action="." method="post">
  <?php echo $form->renderHiddenFields() ?>
  <?php echo $form->renderGlobalErrors() ?>
  <!-- Embedded new bookmark form -->
  <fieldset>
    <legend><?php echo __('Create a new bookmark') ?></legend>
    <?php echo $form['new']->renderError() ?>
    <div class="form-row">
      <?php echo $form['new']['name']->renderLabel() ?>
      <div class="form-field">
        <?php echo $form['new']['name']->render() ?>
        <?php echo $form['new']['name']->renderError() ?>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="form-row">
      <?php echo $form['new']['url']->renderLabel() ?>
      <div class="form-field">
        <?php echo $form['new']['url']->render() ?>
        <?php echo $form['new']['url']->renderError() ?>
      </div>
    </div>
  </fieldset>
  <!-- /Embedded new bookmark form -->
  <!-- Embedded existing bookmark forms -->
  <?php foreach ($form['Bookmarks'] as $i => $eForm): ?>
    <fieldset>
      <legend><?php echo sprintf(__('Edit bookmark #%d'), $i+1) ?></legend>
      <?php echo $eForm->renderError() ?>
      <div class="form-row">
        <?php echo $eForm['name']->renderLabel() ?>
        <div class="form-field">
          <?php echo $eForm['name']->render() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['name']->renderError() ?>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="form-row">
        <?php echo $eForm['url']->renderLabel() ?>
        <div class="form-field">
          <?php echo $eForm['url']->render() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['url']->renderError() ?>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="form-row">
        <div class="form-field">
          <?php echo $eForm['delete']->render() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['delete']->renderError() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['delete']->renderLabel(__('Delete this bookmark')) ?>
        </div>
      </div>
    </fieldset>
  <?php endforeach; ?>
  <!-- /Embedded existing bookmark forms -->
  <input type="submit" value="<?php echo __('Update your bookmarks') ?>"/>
</form>

Now you can really control the semantics of the HTML code of the form, field by field.

As always, if you have better solutions in mind, feel free to post them in the comments.

It’s been quite a long time I didn’t give a go to Doctrine, so as it’s gonna be bundled by default in with the upcoming 1.2 release of symfony, I thought it was a good occasion to play with it.

So let’s checkout the 1.2 SVN branch of symfony and create a test project with a main application^[1]:

$ mkdir sf12test && cd sf12test
$ mkdir -p lib/vendor
$ svn co http://svn.symfony-project.com/branches/1.2 lib/vendor/symfony
$ php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony generate:project sf12test
$ ln -s ../lib/vendor/symfony/data/web/sf web/sf
$ ./symfony generate:app main

Create a webserver vhost pointing to the web folder of the project directory. I’ve already explained plenty of times how to achieve this step.

Now, let’s enable the sfDoctrinePlugin and disable the Propel one by editing the setup() method of the config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php file:

 php
  public function setup()
  {
    $this->disablePlugins('sfPropelPlugin');
    $this->enablePlugins('sfDoctrinePlugin');
  }

You can list the available tasks running this simple command:

$ ./symfony list doctrine

Managing the Database Schema

First, configure your config/databases.yml file to set the database connection parameters. If you want to quick test Doctrine, use a local SQLite db, like this:

 yaml
all:
  doctrine:
    class:    sfDoctrineDatabase
    param:
      dsn:    sqlite://<?php echo dirname(__FILE__).'/../data/data.db' ?>

We’re going to make a very simple weblog application, so let’s configure our database schema. We can do it in YAML^[2], so fire up your favorite editor/IDE and edit a brand new config/doctrine/schema.yml:

 yaml
BlogPost:
  actAs:
    Sluggable:
      fields:       [title]
    Timestampable:
  columns:
    title:          string(255)
    body:           clob
    author:         string(255)

BlogComment:
  actAs:            [Timestampable]
  columns:
    blog_post_id:   integer
    author:         string(255)
    email:          string(255)
    content:        clob
  relations:
    BlogPost:
      class:        BlogPost
      local:        blog_post_id
      foreign:      id
      foreignType:  many
      type:         one

Note that Doctrine offers several pretty cool features including native behaviors (timestampable and slugable are used here).

Now, create a data/fixtures folder and put a data.yml file in, containing some test data in YAML format:

 yaml
BlogPost:
  p1:
    title: My first post
    body: |
      This is cool.
    author: NiKo
    created_at: "<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time() - 86400) ?>"
  p2:
    title: My second post
    body: |
      This is still cool.
    author: NiKo
    created_at: "<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time() - 7200) ?>"
  p3:
    title: Third post
    body: |
      Is this one cool?
    author: Roger Hanin
    created_at: "<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s') ?>"

BlogComment:
  c1:
    BlogPost: p3
    author: John
    email: john@doe.com
    content: Hey, you're right there.
    created_at: "<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time() - 86400) ?>"
  c2:
    BlogPost: p3
    author: Paul
    email: paul@doe.com
    content: Nope, he's not.
    created_at: "<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s') ?>"

Okay, now run the command below to generate the needed files, create the database and fill it with the data fixtures:

$ ./symfony doctrine:build-all-load

We can run several DQL queries in command line to check if everything is fine. DQL is very powerful, and compatible with a lot of RDBMS. You’ll find more information on DQL on the doctrine website.

For example, to find all blog posts:

$ ./symfony doctrine:dql "From BlogPost p"
found 3 results
-
  id: '21'
  title: 'My first post'
  body: "This is cool.\n"
  author: NiKo
  slug: my-first-post
  created_at: '2008-10-29 15:14:25'
  updated_at: '2008-10-30 15:14:25'
-
  id: '22'
  title: 'My second post'
  body: "This is still cool.\n"
  author: NiKo
  slug: my-second-post
  created_at: '2008-10-30 13:14:25'
  updated_at: '2008-10-30 15:14:25'
-
  id: '23'
  title: 'Third post'
  body: "Is this one cool?\n"
  author: 'Roger Hanin'
  slug: third-post
  created_at: '2008-10-30 15:14:25'
  updated_at: '2008-10-30 15:14:25'

Another example, to find informations about the blog post with slug third-post and its associated comments:

$ ./symfony doctrine:dql "Select p.title, p.author, c.author, c.content From BlogPost p, p.BlogComment c Where p.slug = 'third-post' Group by c.id"
found 3 results
-
  id: '23'
  title: 'Third post'
  author: 'Roger Hanin'
  BlogComment: [{ id: '15', author: John, content: 'Hey, you''re right there.' }, { id: '16', author: Paul, content: 'Nope, he''s not.' }]

Put the Query Logic in the Model

The Model part of any MVC architecture must contains the business data and associated logic. In other words, these data and logic should never be handled anywhere else, to decouple your components at max. So we’ll add some query methods in the lib/model/doctrine/BlogPostTable.class.php file, which represents our blog_post table and available operations on it:

 php
<?php
class BlogPostTable extends Doctrine_Table
{
  public function getAll()
  {
    return Doctrine_Query::create()->
      select('p.title, p.slug, p.body, p.author, p.created_at, count(c.id) numcomments')->
      from('BlogPost p, p.BlogComment c')->
      orderBy('p.created_at DESC')->
      groupBy('p.id')->
      execute();
  }

  public function getOneBySlug($slug)
  {
    $posts = Doctrine_Query::create()->
      from('BlogPost p')->
      leftJoin('p.BlogComment c')->
      where('p.slug = ?')->
      orderBy('c.created_at ASC')->
      limit(1)->
      execute(array($slug));

    return isset($posts[0]) ? $posts[0] : null;
  }
}

A Weblog is About Web Interface, uh?

Okay, let’s add pretty controllers and templates to give some life to our blog. First, generate a post module in the main app:

$ ./symfony generate:module main post

Then, edit the apps/main/modules/post/actions/actions.class.php file:

 php
<?php
class postActions extends sfActions
{
  public function executeIndex($request)
  {
    $this->posts = Doctrine::getTable('BlogPost')->getAll();
  }
  
  public function executeShow($request)
  {
    $this->post = Doctrine::getTable('BlogPost')->getOneBySlug($slug = $request->getParameter('slug'));
    $this->forward404Unless($this->post, 'No post with slug=' . $slug);
    $this->comments = $this->post->getBlogComment();
  }
}

We should have display templates too. The first one will show the posts list, in apps/main/modules/post/templates/indexSuccess.php:

 php
<?php foreach ($posts as $post): ?>
  <?php include_partial('post/post', array('post' => $post, 'numComments' => $post->getNumcomments())) ?>
  <hr/>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Note that we must create the _post partial template, in apps/main/modules/post/templates/_post.php:

 php
<h2><?php echo link_to($post->getTitle(), 'post/show?slug='.$post->getSlug()) ?></h2>
<p>
  <small>Posted by <?php echo $post->getAuthor() ?> on <?php echo $post->getCreatedAt() ?>
  <?php if (isset($numComments)): ?>
    - <?php echo $numComments ?> comments
  <?php endif; ?>
  </small>
</p>
<?php echo $post->getBody(ESC_RAW) ?>

The other main template will display one post and its comments, in apps/main/modules/post/templates/showSuccess.php:

 php
<?php include_partial('post/post', array('post' => $post)) ?>

<h2>Comments</h2>
<?php if (!count($comments)): ?>
  <p>No comment yet.</p>
<?php else: ?>
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment): ?>
  <p><small>By <?php echo $comment->getAuthor() ?> on <?php echo $comment->getCreatedAt() ?></small></p>
  <blockquote><?php echo $comment->getContent() ?></blockquote>
<?php endforeach; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

That’s it. A rough but functional weblog if you lauch your browser to yourhost/main_dev.php/post/index:

And if you click a post title:

Good News, the Forms Framework Works with Doctrine Too

Symfony 1.1 introduced the new forms framework, and good news, Doctrine can take part of it. So maybe you’ve already noticed it, we have form classes generated already, in the lib/form/doctrine folder of the project.

So let’s add a neat commenting system to our blog, by first editing the lib/form/doctrine/BlogCommentForm.class.php file:

 php
<?php
class BlogCommentForm extends BaseBlogCommentForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    unset($this['id'], $this['created_at'], $this['updated_at']);
    
    $this->widgetSchema['blog_post_id'] = new sfWidgetFormInputHidden();
    
    $this->validatorSchema['author']  = new sfValidatorString(array('min_length' => 3));
    $this->validatorSchema['email']   = new sfValidatorEmail();
    $this->validatorSchema['content'] = new sfValidatorString(array('min_length' => 5));
  }
}

Now, use the form in the executeShow() method of our controller:

 php
<?php
// ...
  public function executeShow($request)
  {
    $this->post = Doctrine::getTable('BlogPost')->getOneBySlug($slug = $request->getParameter('slug'));
    $this->forward404Unless($this->post, 'No post with slug=' . $slug);
    $this->comments = $this->post->getBlogComment();
    
    $comment = new BlogComment();
    $comment->setBlogPost($this->post);
    $this->form = new BlogCommentForm($comment);
    
    if ($request->isMethod('post') && $this->form->bindAndSave($request->getParameter('blog_comment')))
    {
      $this->redirect('post/show?slug='.$this->post->getSlug());
    }
  }

And in the showSuccess.php template, we’ll append the form display:

 php
<h3>Add a comment</h3>

<?php echo $form->renderFormTag(url_for('post/show?slug='.$post->getSlug())) ?>
  <table>
    <?php echo $form ?>
    <tr>
      <td></td><td><input type="submit"/></td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>

We’ve now a pretty commeting system added to our blog, thanks to all the goodness provided by symfony and Doctrine:

Conclusion

The time when everyone choosed Propel because it was more stable than Doctrine seems to be over. Doctrine is robust, and performs quite well on my box. Furthermore, it handles complex relationships and dynamic object hydratation natively and better than Propel. Doctrine is also very well integrated into symfony, certainly because Jonathan Wage - the Doctrine lead developer - now works for Sensio, creator and main sponsor of symfony.