Laravel repository

Goals

• Provide a common interface for a repository implementation using laravel framework.
• Provide you a good starting point to create simple and maintainable laravel applications.
• Encourage good behavior using repository pattern with a few lines of code
• Simplify your code by abstracting complex behavior
• Cleaning up your models and controllers. (and keeping repositories clean btw!)

What does this package

The point here is to abstract Eloquent models by using standard php objects (stdClass and arrays). This way, you can switch later to another data source such as MongoDB without touching your models. All the bloat of convertion is already handled out of your code.

This package handle fetching Eloquent data, and converting them to plain PHP objects. More data providers will be added later as they are needed.

This package enable you to use the same syntax for displaying data as with eloquent models ($model->data syntax) unlike the toArray approach.

Installation

Import the package

To install, simply add the following line to your composer .json and run composer update:

"atrakeur/repository": "dev-master"

Then add the following service provider to your app.php:

'Atrakeur\Repository\RepositoryServiceProvider',

And finally publish the package config:

php artisan config:publish atrakeur/repository

Create your first repository

A basic repository definition look like that:

<?php

use \Atrakeur\Repository\Eloquent\EloquentConverter;
use \Atrakeur\Repository\Eloquent\AbstractEloquentRepository;

class CategoryRepository extends AbstractEloquentRepository {

	public function __construct(Category $model, EloquentConverter $converter) 
	{
		parent::__construct($model, $converter);
	}

}

Here, we extends AbstractEloquentRepository because we are using Eloquent as a underlying data provider. The goal here is to enable you to switch the data provider but still keeping the same external interface to keep your controllers and views as-is;

When you'll have to switch to another provider, all you'll have to do is to change AbstractEloquentRepository to something else like AbstractMongoRepository and all your controllers will work.

Using the repository

In your controller, you can then use the IoC to automaticly inject the repository.

Just change your constructor to something like:

public function __construct(CategoryRepository $categories) 
{
	parent::__construct();

	$this->categories = $categories;
}

And now, all you have to do is to rewrite all calls to your models to the Repository. For example the code:

Categories::find(1)->with('articles');

becomes

$this->categories->byId(1)->with(array('articles'))->getOne();

The key here is to place this code inside the CategoryRepository class. So in your controller your code is now $this->categories->getCategorie(1);

Cleaner?

Contributing

For now, this package only support Eloquent models, but by using standard php objects, this package is ready to support any other provider that php itself support.

Of course, I'll be glad to help in implenting such data providers. And I'll really appreciate that your contribute back anything you do on that subject.

Each Repository type is usually made of two class: The AbstractRepository, that contains primitives for fetching data, and the Converter, that is used to convert objects returned by your repository to standard php objects.

To contribute, just write your own Repository type then submit a pull request. Please make sure it doesn't have side effects. Please keep it as simple as possible by the way.