Models as Entities using PHP Traits

A feature that I didn't know about until about 1 year ago in CI was the ability to have the database results returned as any class that you can set the attributes on. I've become a big fan of the Repository pattern, myself, and that helped make it all work together pretty seamlessly.

That way you have the user_model which handles mainly working with the database to find, save, etc the data. Then entity classes, just like you've mentioned have zero parent classes and are completely standalone.

Oh - and this absolutely made it's way over to CI4.

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