Re: [Reactor For CF] New features: Table and Field aliases

[Dave Shuck]

Thank you so much for this one Doug.  I am living with one of the ugliest databases known to man and this is a real blessing.  It is absolutely ridiculous what a great tool Reactor is.  My wife is even tired of hearing about it. :)

~Dave

On 2/26/06, Doug Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 

Hey all,

 

I thought I should let you know that I rolled out two much-requested feature today:  Table aliases and Field aliases.

 

First off, this really shouldn't break any existing code.  The framework should just work.  However, the update did, in fact, touch almost every file in reactor.  I suggest that you delete everything under the /reactor/project folder and start fresh.  There were also some changes to the custom objects, but don't bother recreating them, the changes only involved names.

 

So, because this touched so much I really need people to test this feature and report things that did work, but which no longer work.

 

That said, here's the rundown on the new features:

 

Table Aliases.  Typically you'd add an object in your reactor.xml like this:

 

<object name="Category" />

 

However, what if you have a legacy table name?  IE: tbl_Cat  It'd suck to have you create an instance of that object.  It's ugly.  Or, what if your tables are plural?  IE: customers.  Then you'd be stuck creating a CustomersRecord, which is obnoxious.

 

So, now you can add an alias to that tag:

 

<object name="tbl_Cat" alias="Category" />

 

Or

 

<object name="Customers" alias="Customer" />

 

Now you can use the reactorFactory to create an instance of a Category or Customer record.  The files on disk get the aliased name too.

 

Note:  Anywhere you don't provide an alias, the alias is implicitly created as the item's name.  Thus, the following example actually gets an alias of Category.  This is true across all of reactor. 

 

<object name="Category" />

                                                                                                                                    

Any time you create a relationship you must set the relationship's name as the target object's alias.  For example, let's say you three tables, tblEntry, tblEntryCategory and tblCategory.  tblEntryCategory hasOne of both tblEntry and tblCategory.  tblEntry and tblCategory haveMany of each over via tblEntryCategory.  If you wanted to alias these objects to get rid of your tbl prefix your xml would look like this:

 

<objects>

            <object name="tblEntry" alias="Entry">

                        <hasMany name="Category">

                                    <link name="EntryCategory" />

                        </hasMany>

            </object>

           

            <object name="tblEntryCategory" alias="EntryCategory">

                        <hasOne name="Entry">

                                    <relate from="entryId" to="entryId" />

                        </hasOne>

                        <hasOne name="Category">

                                    <relate from="categoryId" to="categoryId" />

                        </hasOne>

            </object>

           

            <object name="tblCategory" alias="Category">

                        <hasMany name="Entry">

                                    <link name="EntryCategory" />

                        </hasMany>

            </object>

</objects>

 

Why do I use the name attribute on the hasmany/hasone tags?  Because these tags also have aliases.  So, I could rename a specific relationship.  IE:

 

<object name="tblCategory" alias="Category">

            <hasMany name="Entry" alias="Article">

                        <link name="EntryCategory" />

            </hasMany>

</object>

 

Field Aliases.  I also introduced field aliases.  Field aliases let you rename fields in your objects.  For example, you might have a column named colIntCatId.  Maybe you want this addressed as categoryId in your application.  To do this you add field tags inside your object tags.  For example:

 

<object name="tblEntry" alias="Entry">

<field name="colIntCatId" alias="categoryId" />

 

<hasMany name="Category">

                        <link name="EntryCategory" />

            </hasMany>

</object>

 

Doing this will cause the properties in the TO use the alias, the get/setters on your records to use the alias, it will show up in the metadata, and your queries will return that column name.  It's actually petty slick!

 

Any fields you don't define aliases for will implicitly be given an alias the same as their name.

 

So, please, get latest.  Test this out.  If you find any issues please let me know.  If something seems funny with these features, please let me know!  This is a BIG update and there are likely to be bugs in it.

 

Next On Tap:

 

-          A solution to the Oracle issues (sorry to keep you waiting Beth)

-          A DB2 driver

-          A Postgres driver

-          Updated validation

-          A real fix for mssql default value problems.

 

Thanks,

 

Doug

 

 

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~Dave Shuck
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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