Simple ORM concepts in coldfusion

ORM (Object Relational Mapping ) helps us to develop applications without writing repetitive SQL statements for select, update, insert and delete operations.

For configuring ORM, we should have a datasource in the server. Also we need to enable ORM in our Application.cfc file.
So the Application.cfc will look like,

component
{

       this.name = "ORMtest";   //Name of the Application
       this.datasource = "DatasourceName";  //setting datasource
       this.ormenabled = true;  //Enabling ORM
       this.ormsettings.dbcreate = "update";  //Allows coldfusion to update database
}

For each tables in the database, we have to create different components or cfcs, which are called Entities. For example, if we have a table called 'Userdetails' , we can create a cfc 'userdetails.cfc', and  we need to map the objects to tables.

component persistent="true" table="Userdetails"
{
    property name="id" fieldType="id" ormtype="int" column="id" ;
    property name="userfirstname"  ;
    property name="userlastname";
    property name="address";
    property name="description";
}

It's important to note that we should have an identifier and we have to mention the fieldtype attribute, like property name="id" fieldType="id" ormtype="int" column="id" ; 
Tthe tag <cfproperty> , simply property is used to map objects.

We can dump the following code to see the new instance of the entity we have mapped.

<cfscript>
    ORMReload();
    udetails = new userDetails();
    WriteDump(udetails);
</cfscript>

The output will look like,
 

Also, we can see the getters and setters for the entity by clicking on the methods in the ablove output.

Inserting data:

For inserting data we can use the following code,

<cfscript>
    udetails = EntityNew( "userDetails" );
    udetails.setid(2);
    udetails.setuserfirstname("Firstname");
    udetails.setuserlastname("Lastname");
    udetails.setaddress("testing ORM");
    udetails.setdescription("testing ORM");
    entitysave(udetails);
    WriteDump(udetails);
</cfscript>

the output will be




 Fetching records:

for fetching records, below code can be used;

<cfscript>
    udetails =EntityLoad( "userDetails",2, True );
    writeDump( udetails );
</cfscript>

Updating records:

<cfscript>
    udetails = EntityLoadByPK( "userDetails", 2 );
    udetails.setdescription( "setting different description" );
    writeDump( udetails );
</cfscript>

Output will be:


More: Ordering records using ColdFusion ORM
          Deleting records using ColdFusion ORM