Rails 3 style finder method chaining and scopes

[ejunker]

I think it would be nice if I could do a query like this:

Book::where('price < ?', 15.00)->all();

instead of the current verbose version:

Book::all(array('conditions' => array('price < ?', 15.00)));

Though due to implementation I realize the syntax may have to be something like:

Book::query()->where('price < ?', 15.00)->all();

query() would return an object which keeps track of the where conditions. where() would return $this so more methods could be chained on to it. When all() is called it uses the stored conditions in the query object to generate the SQL and execute the query.

I think something like this could also be used to create something similar to Rails' scopes. Just create a function that sets the proper where conditions. Perhaps something like this:

public static function cheapBooks()
{
   return static::query()->where('price < ?', 15.00);
}

Then to use it I could just call:

Book::cheapBooks()->all();
// chaining on an order by clause
Book::cheapBooks()->order("price")->all();

You may want to take a look at how rapide-activerecord does this.

[greut]

It could be nice to have something like this yes. Although it seems to be a bit of a work (not many ArrayObject in there). Have you started anything yet?

[dfyx]

I've done something very similar today (I was writing my own rails-like active record for PHP just before I found out about this project). I won't promise a pull request soon but I'll at least try to fit my approach into your code.