Overview

This entry is a continuation of the Solar CLI series--a series that aims to detail Solar CLI commands, available options, parameters, and usage examples. In this entry we take a look at make-model, a command that can generate models based on a SQL table.

First Glance

Make-model reduces the time it takes to set up models, which can be very time consuming to setup by hand. Make-model streamlines this process by reading your existing SQL table and creating the model based off of this information.

Let's first start by taking a look at what help can tell us about the command make-vendor.

Note: It is assumed that your Solar System is installed under /var/www/solar/.

If you have not done so already, change directories to the root of your Solar System. In our case, that would be /var/www/solar/.

Help Information

$ ./script/solar help make-model
Using include_path '.:..:/var/www/solar/include'.
Using config file '/var/www/solar/config/Solar.config.php'.

No help is available for this command.

Valid options for this command are...

--adapter
:  The SQL adapter class to use.

--config
:  Use this configuration file when starting Solar.

--connect
:  Connect to the database and fetch cols for the model setup.

--extends
:  Extend the model class from this parent class name.

--host
:  The host for the database connection.

--name
:  The name of the database to connect to.

--pass
:  The password for the database connection.

--port
:  The port for the database connection.

--table
:  The table name for the model to use.

--target
:  Write files to this directory, typically the include directory.

--user
:  The username for the database connection.

-V | --version
:  Display version information and exit.

-v | --verbose
:  Display verbose output when available.

Available Options

Adapter The SQL adapter to use. Examples include Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql and Solar_Sql_Adapter_Sqlite.

Connect: If set to true, Solar connects to the SQL table to generate the model to reflect the columns in the table.

Extends: The name of the class that we want to extend. Defaults to Solar_Sql_Model.

Host: The host where the database resides (e.g. localhost).

Name: Name of the database to connect to.

Pass: Password to be used with user name.

Port: Port that our database is running on.

Table: Table name we want to create our model for and from.

User: User name that has access to the database table.

Available Parameters

Class: The class name. This is required. An example would be Vendor_Model_Posts.

Usage Examples

Now, this is where using a configuration file makes life easy. First though, I am going to show you the (more time consuming) way to generate a model without changing your current (default) configuration file.

Just so I do not lose you, let me specify the basic settings I am using for my database.

• Database type: MySQL
• Database name: vendor
• Host: localhost
• User name: root
• Password: s3cr3tP@ssw0rd

Now let's generate a model that controls blog posts. The name of this model will be posts. The table layout we will be using looks like this:

• id (primary key, auto increment)
• title (varchar(100))
• body (text)
• author (varchar(100))
• created (datetime)
• updated (datetime)

For the lazy people reading this, you can just run the following MySQL to generate the table.

CREATE TABLE posts(
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
PRIMARY KEY(id),
    title VARCHAR(100),
    body VARCHAR(100),
    author VARCHAR(100),
    created DATETIME,
    updated DATETIME
) engine=INNODB

Now on to generating our model for posts (the long way).

$ ./source/solar make-model --adapter=Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql --connect=true --host=localhost --name=vendor --pass=s3cr3tP@ssw0rd --table=posts --user=root Vendor_Model_Posts

That is all there is to it. You can see the files generated by changing directories to /var/www/solar/source/vendor/Vendor/Model/. Here you will see the following layout.

• /Posts.php
• /Posts/Collection.php
• /Posts/Record.php
• /Posts/Setup
• /Posts/Setup/table_cols.php
• /Posts/Setup/table_name.php

Now, the easy way to generate models is to save your database connection information to your configuration file. Go ahead and open up Solar.config.php, located under the directory /var/www/solar/config/.

Add the following to the configuration file.

<?php
$config['Solar_Sql']['adapter'] = 'Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql';

$config['Solar_Sql_Adapter_Mysql'] = array(
    'host' = 'localhost',
    'user' = 'root',
    'pass' = 's3cr3tP@ssw0rd',
    'name' = 'vendor',
);
?>

Now, when we want to generate a model, we only need to do the following.

$ ./script/solar make-model --table=posts Vendor_Model_Posts

What's Next?

In my next post I will cover make-app, a command used to auto-generate application skeletons.

Until then, join the Solar mailing list and/or IRC channel -- we have cookies.