TooBasic: Adapters

What are adapters

We won't say that you've come to the wrong neighborhood, but if you are here is because you're looking for a way to do something interesting.

Let's first talk about what is an adapter for TooBasic. One of the ideas of this framework is to be able to work with more than one technology providing you with a more flexible support.

For example, let's say you can't afford to have MySQL, for whatever reason, in your site but SQLite will be great. For this cases, TooBasic has a generic way to interact with database structures and, before talking to the real database, it relays actions to a middleman, a specific class with the knowledge to translate those intended action into the real deal. This classes are adapters and we're going to explain them in further sections and try to tell you how to create your own.

Anyway, if you are here, you probably know what adapter pattern and strategy pattern are, and TooBasic uses a bit of both. If you don't know them, you may read these links:

Cache adapters

The most simple and common adapters inside TooBasic are cache adapters and they provide a way to store temporary data through several mechanisms.

Cache adapters provided by TooBasic are:

TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\File
TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\DBMySQL
TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\Memcached
TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\Memcache
TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\NoCache

If you want you can read more about them in the cache documentation.

Database structure maintainer adapters

Something that is always different between database engines is how they provide reflection of elements inside a database. While you can use something like the next query to obtain tables in MySQL:

select  distinct(table_name) as name
from    information_schema.statistics
where   table_catalog = 'def'
 and    table_schema  = database();

For SQLite it would be:

select  distinct name;
from    sqlite_master
where   type = 'table'

And Oracle would be another story.

This kind of differences beg for adapters and that's the reason why TooBasic provides these adapters:

TooBasic\Adapters\DB\SpecMySQL
TooBasic\Adapters\DB\SpecSQLite
TooBasic\Adapters\DB\SpecPosgreSQL

For you this may be transparent, if you use a connection to a SQLite database you won't need to do a thing, TooBasic will choose the right adapter based on the engine of your connection configuration.

I want mine!

Let's say you want to use CouchBase instead of Memcached because it's what you need and because you already paid the license :)

You may try using TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\Memcached because CouchBase provides an access with the same interface, but that's not what you need. In other words, you need a cache adapter for CouchBase.

To achieve this you have to go through the next 3 steps:

Step 0: into a module

For this example will suppose you're creating a module/plugin for TooBasic named CouchBasePlugin and you'll have it deployed at ROOTDIR/modules/CouchBasePlugin with this basic folders list:

ROOTDIR/modules/CouchBasePlugin/configs
ROOTDIR/modules/CouchBasePlugin/includes

Step 1: new adapter

The first thing is to create the adapter itself. Let's write the next code at ROOTDIR/modules/CouchBasePlugin/includes/cacheadapter.php:

<?php
class CacheAdapterCouchBase extends \TooBasic\Adapters\Cache\Adapter {
    public function delete($prefix, $key) {

        . . .

    }
    public function get($prefix, $key, $delay = self::EXPIRATION_SIZE_LARGE) {
        $data = null;

        . . .

        return $data;
    }
    public function save($prefix, $key, $data, $delay = self::EXPIRATION_SIZE_LARGE) {

        . . . 

    }
}

Of course, you'll have to fill this method with some actual logic.

Step 2: using the adapter

Now that you have an adapter, you need to change your site's configuration. If you visit this link, you'll find how to do this, but to save you same time, add this line at ROOTDIR/site/config.php:

<?php
$Defaults[GC_DEFAULTS_CACHE_ADAPTER] = '\\CacheAdapterCouchBase';

Step 3: including the adapter

At this point you have an adapter and you have it set to be used, but your site is dead. This is because TooBasic doesn't know where to get this adapter. To solve this, add the next line at ROOTDIR/modules/CouchBasePlugin/configs/config.php:

<?php
$SuperLoader['CacheAdapterCouchBase'] = "{$Directories[GC_DIRECTORIES_MODULES]}/CouchBasePlugin/includes/cacheadapter.php";

This will tell TooBasic's super loader to get your adapter's class from the right file.

I want my database structure maintainer adapter

We told you how to add a cache adapter, but if you created your own database structure maintainer adapter for Oracle inherited from \TooBasic\Adapters\DB\SpecAdapter, you'll have to do something a little different in the step 2:

<?php
$Database[GC_DATABASE_DB_ADAPTERS]['oci'] = '\\MyDBSpecAdapterOracle';

View adapters

All around this documentation we talk about Smarty as the engine to render HTML templates as if it were the corner stone of TooBasic, but even though it saves us a lot of headaches, it is just a library used through a view adapter. This means you can create your own view adapter writing a class inherited from \TooBasic\Adapters\View\Adapter.

Once you have your own adapter, you can change the default view adapter by adding this line to your site's configuration:

<?php
$Defaults[GC_DEFAULTS_VIEW_ADAPTER] = '\\TooBasic\\Adapters\\View\\MyEngine';

Also, if you are not sure if it works or not, you can just add it as a format interpreter by doing this:

<?php
$Defaults[GC_DEFAULTS_FORMATS]['myformat'] = '\\TooBasic\\Adapters\\View\\MyEngine';

And then access your URLs like this:

http://www.example.com/mysite/?action=myaction&format=myformat

Others

Other view adapters are:

\TooBasic\Adapters\View\Smarty: The not-so-corner-stone :)
\TooBasic\Adapters\View\Dump: Displays your controllers as var_dump() results (?format=dump).
\TooBasic\Adapters\View\JSON: Displays your controllers in JSON fromat (?format=json).
\TooBasic\Adapters\View\Printr: Displays your controllers as print_r() results (?format=print).
\TooBasic\Adapters\View\Serialize: Displays your controllers as serialize() results (?format=serialize).
\TooBasic\Adapters\View\XML: Displays your controllers in XML fromat (?format=xml).
- Warning: This depends on some PHP functions in status BETA.

Suggestions

We suggest you visit these links:

Adapters