RedBean relation definitions

Question

I'm not following, how exactly I define relations in RedBean, not on the fly.

I have a user which can have a parent user that is considered an employer. On the opposite side, a user can have employees which are also users.

How would I go about defining this?

I'd like the interface to be something of this sort:

$user = R::load('user', $id);
var_dump($user->hasEmployees); // show all employees
var_dump($user->ownEmployer); // show my employer

But it looks like, I have to define them every time like this:

$user->hasEmployees = R::findAll('user', 'employer_id = ?', array($user->id));
$user->ownEmployer  = R::load('user', $user->employer_id);

Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a dynamic system. Since there's no real model (or not a very extensive one), I'm assuming you create the relations one time and use them, and RedBean knows to do so next time on?

Or do I have to define that relationship whenever I'm accessing the model? (could I use the dispense() method in the model in that case?)

If so, how does that work exactly?

What am I missing?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You should talk a look at the relations section on redbeanphp.com. Relations are created by strict naming conventions. In your case it would work like this:

// Dispense the beans
list($employer, $employee1, $employee2) = R::dispense('employee', 3);

// Create relations
$employer->ownEmployeeList = array($employee1, $employee2);

// Demonstrate relations
var_dump($employer->ownEmployeeList); // returns $employee1 and $employee2
var_dump($employee1->employee); // returns $employer