Models

• Introduction
• Basic models
• WordPress database

Introduction

The Themosis framework comes with full support of the illuminate/database package and provides Laravel Eloquent ORM to your application.

Eloquent is an ActiveRecord implementation for working with your database. Each database table has a corresponding "Model" which is used to interact with that table. Models allow you to query for data in your tables, as well as insert new records into the table.

By default, your application is configured to connect to a MySQL database. You can manage your database configuration in the config/database.php file.

The Themosis framework is bundled with the following database tools:

• Database query builder
• Eloquent ORM
• Database migration
• Collections

For more details on what is available by these tools and their full configuration, please refer to the official documentation.

Basic models

In order to create a model, simply create a new PHP class inside the root app/Models directory of your application by using the make:model command:

php artisan make:model Book

The above command will generate a model class inside your app/Models folder, but you are free to place them anywhere that can be autoloaded according to your composer.json file. All Eloquent models extends Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model class:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Book extends Model
{
    //
}

If you would like to generate a database migration when you generate the model, you may use the --migration or -m option:

php artisan make:model Book --migration

php artisan make:model Book -m

For more details on how to configure your models, retrieving models, inserting, updating, deleting models and more, please follow the official documentation.

WordPress database

The Themosis framework does not provide models by default to manage WordPress database tables data. But here is an example on how to configure a model to manage the wp_posts database table.

First, let's create a Post model class using the make:model command:

php artisan make:model Post

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    //
}

By convention, Eloquent use a "snake case", plural name of the class as the table name. So by default, our Post model expects a database table with a name of posts, which is the name of the table defined by WordPress without its prefix (wp_posts - depending on your database prefix configuration).

Table name prefix is automatically handled. You can define it in your environment configuration. See the config/database.php configuration file for the available variables.

In the case where you need to customize the table name for your model, use the $table instance property like so:

// The model is looking after a table
// with the "wp_custom_table" name.
protected $table = 'custom_table';

Do not specify the table prefix even for a custom name as this is handled automatically.

By default, Eloquent models expect that the primary key is an id column. However, WordPress is setting the wp_posts table primary key column to ID. Let's update the default model and set the $primaryKey property of the model:

/**
 * @var string
 */
protected $primaryKey = 'ID';

Each Eloquent models also expect that your database table handle timestamps using a created_at and updated_at columns. WordPress, in our case is using the post_date and post_modified columns. Let's update the model to handle those columns:

const CREATED_AT = 'post_date';
const UPDATED_AT = 'post_modified';

Here is the code sample for a custom Post model class that allow you to manage your WordPress posts using Eloquent:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    const CREATED_AT = 'post_date';
    const UPDATED_AT = 'post_modified';

    /**
     * @var string
     */
    protected $primaryKey = 'ID';
}

Read the official documentation for more details about Eloquent ORM.

Next

Read the hooks guide