PerchAPI_Factory

Perch uses the factory pattern, a common design pattern for building object-oriented software. When building Perch apps you can extend the PerchAPI_Factory class to define your own objects:

class Articles extends PerchAPI_Factory { }

The class comes with a number of useful methods for writing and fetching data to/from the database.

Naming convention

Try to keep your classes namespaced by prefixing your (company) name and app name. So if your company is called Company and your app is called App, you would use CompanyApp_Articles:

class CompanyApp_Articles extends PerchAPI_Factory { }

Properties

Property	Description	Default
table	The database table where the data of the objects created by the factory class is stored
pk	The primary key for the database table
index_table	The index database table	`false`
default_sort_column	The default sort column for database queries
default_sort_direction	The default sort direction for database queries	`ASC`
dynamic_fields_column	The dynamic fields column	`false`
singular_classname	The class name for a single `PerchAPI_Base` object
namespace	The template namespace `perch:{namespace}`	`content`

Example

  class CompanyApp_Articles extends PerchAPI_Factory {
        protected $table = 'company_app_articles';
        protected $pk = '_id';
        protected $default_sort_column = 'publishedDate';
        protected $default_sort_direction = 'DESC';

        protected $namespace = 'blog';
        protected $singular_classname = 'CompanyApp_Article';
  }