Simple PHP ORM

Question

I'm looking for an ORM (Object-Relational Mapper) for PHP. I want something simple that I can get started with quickly. I'm used to ActiveRecord in Rails, but I don't need a full framework. My partner knows PHP, but is not really a programmer, and learning a framework would take more time than the project.

Thanks, Craig

Answer 1

You may want to try Doctrine. http://www.doctrine-project.org/

Answer 2

Another option could be Propel.

Answer 3

I support @boxoft's recommendation of Doctrine.

However, in the spirit of options, I should mention the Zend_Db component of Zend Framework along with the Zend Framework ORM project.

Answer 4

It's not an ORM, but I use ADODB.

It is very simple to use, is rock-solid and very straight forward.

Answer 5

I like Kohana so far, and it is simple to use by just extending a base class for each of your tables:

http://docs.kohanaphp.com/libraries/orm

Answer 6

Check out Outlet ORM: http://www.outlet-orm.org/

Answer 7

Kohana looks like what I'm looking for. I've not gotten a chance to use it yet -- I'm still using my hand-coded ORM. Thanks for the tip though!

Answer 8

I used Pear's DB_DataObject and it works pretty cool. It might not be very sophisticated but it's very simple and very lightweight.

Answer 9

Good stand-alone ORMs i would suggest are (all have stable releases): - Doctrine (phpdoctrine.org) - Propel (propel.phpdb.org) - ezpdo (ezpdo.net)

you should not use: - Kohana -> as it is a full framework (including an orm) - ADODB -> as it is no ORM but a database abstraction layer - ZendDB/Zend ORM project -> ORM project is not stable and not officially maintained by zend

Answer 10

You might want to check out phpDataMapper. It's based on the DataMapper pattern instead of the ActiveRecord pattern as you had mentioned, but it is very lightweight and easy to use.

Answer 11

The most simple ORM layer for PHP i have seen is: SPOD

Answer 12

I've been working on a really simple nearly-zero-configuration single-class ORM called Idiorm.

It gives you a fluent query API that looks like this:

$widgets = ORM::for_table('widget')
    ->where('size', 'large')
    ->order_by_desc('name')
    ->find_many();

This will return an array of objects.

Another example: find a single object, update and save:

$widget = ORM::for_table('widget')->where('name', 'Basic Widget')->find_one();
$widget->name = 'Advanced Widget';
$widget->save();

This requires no model configuration (no model classes or XML files) - just database connection details. It's a nice drop-in replacement to clean up legacy code littered with raw SQL strings, and it's perfect for small, simple applications.

Have a look at the documentation on Github. Also, see this blog post about Idiorm. Any feedback greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: I have recently released another project - Paris - which is a very lightweight Active Record implementation built on top of Idiorm.

Answer 13

Repose PHP ORM is another potential solution.

Answer 14

Try DaBase - most easy to use and lightweight ORM for PHP!

Answer 15

Check out Simple ORM for PHP it is intended to be a very light weight version of Hibernate and requires far fewer steps to setup. Development is still in progress and help is needed.