The Bakery Everything CakePHP

Download: http://freenity.googlecode.com/files/RowObjectBehavior%20v.%200.2.rar
Note: The version 0.2 was release, please update.

Model represents a table, it's a container which puts all the data retrieval logic inside it. The row level, that is a single record in this model should contain row level access logic. Currently we can obtain an array representing the row. We can only get data, what in most cases is fine, but it violates OOP principles by separating operations from data. One of the very useful design pattern we could implement is Row Data Gateway, that is represent a row as an object.

RowObjectBehavior does exactly this. By allowing you create objects that will represent your rows. It uses the afterFind() method to convert the array results into an object and adds some CRUD methods.

By just including the behavior you will get two functions that will operate on this record level: save() and remove()

Model Class:

Download code <?php 
class TestModel extends AppModel {
    var $actsAs = array('RowObject' => array('rowClass' => 'TestRow'));
}
?>
By setting rowClass we could set our own row class which has to be created in models/ directory. This class should extends from AppRow class. If nothing is specified in the rowClass option, AppRow is used.

AppRow works just like AppModel or AppController, it contains all the methods shared among all the row classes. This is an optional class, and it can be created in the app folder as app_row.php AppRow class must extend Row.

Some examples:
Download code
public function showSomeFeatures() {
    $user = $this->findById(2);
    $user->name = 'Another name';
    $user->save();
    $user->remove();
}

More examples are available at http://code.google.com/p/freenity/wiki/RowObjectBehavior
NOTE: most of the time you can work with models without using this, as the model will do it's job just fine, but there are some use cases where having this kind of abstraction is really useful specially for application maintaining.