The correct way to fetch a lot of data in PHP5 object oriented

Question

Hello Everyone,

Fortunately, I know how to fetch data from the database, That's not a problem. For my object oriented application I would have a table with users / persons. I also have a person class.

The case: I would like to show to the end user a list with all the persons. What is the correct way to show do this?

1. using mysql_fetch_object() in this case php will create it's own type of object, not my own type of person
2. Fetching all the rows from the db and then create an object of each?

Or is there an other better way to do it?

Can you also please show some (pseudo) code?

Thanks

Answer 1

• option 1: use ORM (Propeler, Doctrine)
• option 2: create class People ("Persons"), which will load it's data using mysql_fetch_*, then create array of Person objects. Have it implement IteratorAggregate with getIterator returning ArrayIterator(personArray)

Answer 2

The mysql_fetch_object() function takes a second parameter, which is the class name to use:

$myPerson = mysql_fetch_object($result, 'person');

Answer 3

If you use PDO, $pdoStatement->fetchObject($type) fetches a single row as instance of $type Class

To fetch all objects as instance of $type Class, use $pdoStatement->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_CLASS, $type)