The approach you are describing is misusing Zend Entity as a data access layer only, however its purpose is really managing of object identities. Although its possible to dynamically set a different metadata model based on properties its really not recommended at all and there will be no support with whatever problems might occur with this use case.
Instead a good use-case would be nest the ACL inside your entities and allow the request of certain data/relations only if these acls are meet. This way you push the access of different properties to the domain model and abstract from the persistence, which is what Zend Entity is about. It seems however with what you describe Zend_Db_Table is a pretty good access strategy for your relational data, Zend_Entity however is about objects that are instantiated completly. Partially loaded objects won't be supported. greetings, Benjamin On Wed, 9 Sep 2009 16:43:19 -0700 (PDT), Chris Murray <cmur...@murtek.com> wrote: > Chris Murray wrote: >> >> So I need to be able to dynamically set the property list in Zend_Entity >> > > Another possible approach would be to create my own def object generator. I > already have my definitions in my model and they are used for other > purposes, such as form element configs, formatting, and display properties. > So, I could build the def object and pass it to > Zend_Entity_MetadataFactory_Code (rather than passing in a file path). That > way, I don't have to create multiple def files for each unique combination > of properties that are used in my application. Instead, just build the def > object dynamically based on already existing, multi-purpose object property > lists and their individual attributes. > > Is that a better way to do it?
