What is the proper way of implementing Table Data Gateway pattern in Zend Framework 1.x?

Question

According to Zend quick start guide I need three classes (A model, A mapper class and a table gateway class) to implement the Table Data Gateway pattern. But is this a good approach?

Right now this is how I implement the pattern.

class Application_Model_Person(){
    private $_name;

    public function getName();
    public function setName($name);
}   

class Application_Model_PersonMapper extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract {

      public function fetch();
      public function search();
      public function save(Application_Model_Person $person);
      public function delete();

}

So I have a model class with all getter/setter methods and another class which extends the Zend_Db_Table_Abstract class and performs all crud operations. I like this approach as it reduces the number of classes and is easy to follow. But is this a proper way of doing it?

Also what advantages will I get if I use the approach in the Zend quick start guide?

Answer 1

It depends on the size of your project really. ZF is what I call "enterprise ready", i.e. build a large web application. In my mind and following these pattern I can scale almost infinitely. However, for many smaller projects this could be overkill.

The only problem I see with your example is extending a mapper to a DbTable which is following the common pattern just wrong. For a smaller project you could have your Models (external--application view) and access your DbTable classes (internal--Db gateway) directly and skip the mapper.

If for whatever reason later on you decide you need mappers for certain tables you should be able to implement them rather easily.