Fetching categories and items with Zend Framework

Answer 1

Your question is not really related to Zend Framework. You are fetching data using Doctrine, not ZF.

In your case, I think you should be able to loop over the links in the specific category using foreach($linkCat->Link as $link), seeing how you use innerJoin to load the relation.

Answer 2

Hi,

Instead of doing those two queries, couldn't you go with only one ?

I see you have an Inner Join in your first query, so I suppose this could be possible ; I suppose you have some rule that says "One link is in one and only one category", which is a One-To-Many Relation ; maybe the Dealing with Relations part of the manual could help you.

What I would do might be :

• remove the distinct from the first query, to get all links + for each one, its category
  • this is the list you want, isn't it ?
  • also, order by category and link, so it's easier to display (links being already ordered by category)
• remove the second query

I suppose something like this would do :

$linkCat = Doctrine_Query::create()
    ->from('LinkCategory lc')
    ->innerJoin('lc.Link l WITH lc.id = l.link_category_id')
    ->orderBy('lc.name, l.name')
    ->execute();

(not tested, though : might need a bit more tunning)

Once you have that data, pass it to the views, where you'll do your loop -- remember lonks are already sorted by category :

• display the name of the first category ; store it in a variable
• loop on the links
  • if the category of the current link is not the same as the one of the previous link (store in the variable), then it means it's the end of a category, and the beginning of a new one
  • continue
• when you reach the end of the links, it's also the end of the last category

This should work, I'd say (of course, you still have to code -- but the idea is here)

As a sidenote : you are using Doctrine classes, writting DQL, and all that in your Controller -- This is quite not the place : all this should go in your Model Classes, not in a Controller.

Have fun !