Category: Development

I must admit, my recent articles are becoming a bit obsessed around the repository pattern.  What can I say, I like it, it’s useful, and it’s not restrictive based on a language or a framework.

I’ve long professed how I dislike convoluted controllers.  CakePHP’s find method almost immediately causes this when used inside a controller.  More importantly, the code inside the find method is extremely unreadable.  This is almost more important than a large controller function!

This is where the repository pattern comes in.  At its most basic example (which some will consider overkill – you know who you are), I still think the repository pattern is clearer.

Here is an example using the regular find approach:

[code]
$user = $this->User->find('first', array('conditions' => array('id' => $id)));
[/code]

Compared to a repository example:

[code]
$user = $this->UserRepository->GetById($id);
[/code]

The code is almost identically; however, in the second example, it’s clear that if I were to “read” the code I am retrieving a user by id opposed to I’m finding the first user with the conditions of id being equal to the variable $id.

So if you are sold, let’s continue with a full suite example…

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