Persistence in PHP with Doctrine ORM

Understanding the concepts behind Doctrine

Doctrine ORM implements Data Mapper and Unit of Work design patterns.

The Data Mapper is a layer designed to synchronize data stored in database with their related objects of the domain layer. In other words, it does the following:

• Inserts and updates rows in the database from data held by object properties
• Deletes rows in the database when related entities are marked for deletion
• Hydrates in-memory objects with data retrieved from the database

Note

For more information about the Data Mapper and Unit of Work design patterns, you can refer to the following links: http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/dataMapper.html and http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/unitOfWork.html

In the Doctrine terminology, a Data Mapper ...