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Alex Bauer
9,426 PointsCan someone help me understand Interfaces in PHP?
I have a screenshot of my code here: https://w.trhou.se/obdnvecaci
My Questions:
- What is “posts” in index.php? I thought it had to be a property because in jsonRepository when we return $data->$entity I know that “$entity” is referring to “posts” when the object was instantiated.
- The foreach function in jsonRepository really confuses me. I’ve read in the documentation that json_decode returns the value of that which was read into an “appropriate PHP type”; meaning to me that it was an array thus allowing us to use it in the foreach loop as an array. Second, the if statement; what is $field in “$data->$field”? Again, this must mean that it’s a property or a method because of this “->” indication but I can’t understand what it could mean or when it was defined. Also, I don’t even know why there’s an if statement used to allow the method to work if the 3rd parameter wasn’t even used in the original call to the method? (i.e var_dump($repo->find('posts', 1));)
P.S. If I can get any help I'd greatly appreciate it even if it doesn't answer all of my questions. I appreciate any effort and time anyone could give. Thank you.
2 Answers
Anton Mikhailov
1,755 Pointshey there, no problem
so, javascript isn't a requirement for this code it's just json
think of json like a csv or a serialized object, it's just a format to store data, javascript uses it a lot, but it's not part of it good luck on your journey
Alex Bauer
9,426 PointsThank you, good luck to you too :D
Alex Bauer
9,426 PointsYes, this helps SO much thank you! I haven't began to learn javascript or json yet so I think that's what was confusing me. I REALLY appreciate your response and your time, I'll come back to this once I learn javascript and then I think I would be able to interpret the code.
Anton Mikhailov
1,755 PointsAnton Mikhailov
1,755 PointsI've read the code you posted and here are the answers to your questions:
1 - the 'posts' in index.php is the section of the json where the repository class will look for data. In this abstraction the original programmer made as if the database.json was a proper database and every key in it were a table, as every key contains an array of objects which would be interpreted as rows in this table abstraction. To understand what $data->$entity means you must have two concepts clear: one - json_decode returns a stdclass by defalut and an array if you pass true to the second and optional parameter. So, as the code does json_decode returns an object to the $data. seconde - if you would do $data[$entity] you would be accessing the $entity key inside the array, the same goes for objects, when you use $data->$entity you are accessing the $entity property from the $data object. You can still do this to call methods like this: $method = "find"; $repo->$method();
2 - explaining this function is now easier now that you know that json_decode returns an object, inside the foreach it will loop throgh each $key of your json_decode, or in this abstraction, for each 'table' of your json database. So basically, what this functions does is: it FINDs the data that has a value matching the passed $value on the given $field, which defaults to 'id'. So, if you want to search a post by the 'primary key' of your json database, you would do: $repo->find('posts',1); OR $repo->find('posts',1,'id');
But if you wanted to find a page with the slug home, how would you do it?
$repo->find("pages", "home", "slug"); "pages" is your entity, or table "home" is the value you are looking for "id"is the field
If you wanted to write a mysql repository for that, you would implement those two methods as:
public function getConnection(){ return new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=database", "root", "root"); }
public function all($entity){ $con = $this->getConnection(); $sth = $con->prepare("SELECT * FROM $entity"); return $sth->fetchAll(); }
public function find($entity, $value, $field = 'id'){ $con = $this->getConnection(); $sth = $con->prepare("SELECT * FROM $entity WHERE $field = ?"); $sth->bindParam(1,$value); return $sth->fetchAll(); }
hope that helped!