Managing entity persistence

No matter how you created your repository, they always implement the same RepositoryInterface and while act exactly the same. Let's say you want to insert a new entity into your layout, you'd do something like this:

<?php
$repository->insert(new SampleEntity('test'));

Similary, when you want to update the record, you'd call the update() method:

<?php
$repository->update($changedSampleEntity);

In the same way, you can also delete a record from the layout:

<?php
$repository->delete($oldSampleEntity);

Please note that both update() and delete() only work with entities which you retrieved via the repository (also known as managed entities). If you try to pass an entity to those methods which is not known by the repository, you will get an exception. By default, both update() and delete() will instruct the FileMaker Server to only execute that command when the mod-id is the same as the one from the local entity to avoid changing records which were modified in another place. You can disable that behaviour by passing true to the second $force parameter of those methods.

Retrieving entities through a simple search

Repositories offer multiple ways, to retrieve entites. The simplest one is by calling the find() method with a record ID of the record you want to retrieve. The result will either be an instance of that entity or null:

<?php
$sampleEntity = $repository->find(1);

Similary, there is a findBy() and a findOneBy() method for either retrieving multiple records or a single one with a simple field search. Both methods take an array field search values, where the array key is the field name and the array value is the actual search. By default, the search value is automatically quoted. If you need to perform more advanced searches, you can pass false to the $autoQuoteSearch parameter and do required quoting manually by passing the value to quote to the quoteString() method. For details about the different search options, please refer to the FileMaker documentation.

If you only want to retrieve all records from the layout without filterinig, there's also a findAll() method. All methods which return multiple records also accept a $sort parameter for sorting the results, as well as a $limit and $offset parameter.

Performing complex searches

While the findBy() and findOneBy() methods will always perform an AND query. something you may want to make OR queries or mixed queries. To allow this, the repository exposes two methods, namely findByQuery() and findOneByQuery(). Both work similar to the prior two methods, but instead of a search array they take a FindQuery object:

<?php
use Soliant\SimpleFM\Repository\Query\FindQuery;
use Soliant\SimpleFM\Repository\Query\Query;

$query = new FindQuery();
$query->addOrQueries(
    new Query('ID', '1'),
    new Query('ID', '2'),
);
$query->addAndQueries(
    new Query('Name', 'foo'),
    new Query('Status', 'closed', true)
);

$sampleEntities = $respository->findByQuery($query);

This will query will look for any record which ID is either 1 or 2 and which Name equals "foo", but the Status field must not be "closed".