README

LessQL is a lightweight and performant alternative to Object-Relational Mapping for PHP.

Guide | Conventions | API Reference | About

If you are looking for an SQL-based approach superior to raw PDO, check out DOP as an alternative.

Fork Notes

The notes in this section outlines information regarding differences with the original repository: morris/lessql
Other sections MAY have ONLY important/appropriate updates made to them compared with the original repository.
Reasons for fork:
- Last update is old:
  - (May 10, 2020 at time of writing): Releases
  - Is this project still maintained?
  - Next release...
- Errors/warnings when using with newer PHP versions:
  - PHP 8.1 deprecated errors such as with "offsetExists".
  - Row not found exception. require_once of Row fixed it.
- Still using it in some projects so need to have a working up-to-date source(installed via composer through packagist.).
Notes:
- morris/dop is mentioned as an alternative, but it does not seem to have much development or be maintained.

Installation

Install LessQL via composer: composer require theopenweb/lessql. LessQL requires PHP >= 8.0 and PDO.

Usage

// SCHEMA
// user: id, name
// post: id, title, body, date_published, is_published, user_id
// categorization: category_id, post_id
// category: id, title

// Connection
$pdo = new PDO('sqlite:blog.sqlite3');
$db = new LessQL\Database($pdo);

// Find posts, their authors and categories efficiently:
// Eager loading of references happens automatically.
// This example only needs FOUR queries, one for each table.
$posts = $db->post()
    ->where('is_published', 1)
    ->orderBy('date_published', 'DESC');

foreach ($posts as $post) {
    $author = $post->user()->fetch();

    foreach ($post->categorizationList()->category() as $category) {
        // ...
    }
}

// Saving complex structures is easy
$row = $db->createRow('post', [
    'title' => 'News',
    'body' => 'Yay!',
    'categorizationList' => [
        [
            'category' => ['title' => 'New Category']
        ],
        ['category' => $existingCategoryRow]
    ]
]);

// Creates a post, a new category, two new categorizations
// and connects them all correctly.
$row->save();

Features

Efficient deep finding through intelligent eager loading
Constant number of queries, no N+1 problems
Save complex, nested structures with one method call
Convention over configuration
Work closely to your database: LessQL is not an ORM
No glue code required
Clean, readable source code
Fully tested with SQLite3, MySQL and PostgreSQL
MIT license

Inspired mainly by NotORM, it was written from scratch to provide a clean API and simplified concepts.

Contributors

Thanks!

theopenweb / lessql

Maintainers

Details