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

• theopenwebjp
• jayaddison
• f0ma

Thanks!