DataMapper ORM v1.8.0

[eluser]Chillahan[/eluser]
[quote author="WanWizard" date="1305900855"]@Chillahan,

In Datamapper, the column 'id' is required, MUST be called 'id', and must be an integer auto increment primary key. There is no way around it, the column name is hardcoded everywhere, and not easy to change (as you have noticed). This is on the roadmap though, probably for v2.0.
[/quote]

I assumed this was the case. Note that it is still an abstract key (no data involved), it's just that this client required it to be named with the table name as part of it (and as part of ALL fields), which is one standard, although not my personal choice.

Would you recommend against just forking DM and changing the id throughout to be id OR tablename_id? I guess it probably isn't so easy, there's a LOT of code there.

To answer your questions:
1) The field $row->id doesn't exist, you'll get a notice, and the value defaults to FALSE. $this->id != FALSE is TRUE, so the method it doesn't return FALSE.

Doh, silly me - missed that, it's FALSE != FALSE. Knew there was something there with the id missing causing that.

[quote[
3) Datamapper uses the CI database library's transaction methods, to wrap it's operations in. This means you can not use DM transactions over multiple database operations. Use $this->db->trans...() instead to wrap it around multiple DM operations.
(some db engines, like MySQL, don't allow you to nest transactions. Starting a transaction will immediately commit the previous one).
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I am confused - I thought the CI transaction did allow for grouping of operations? I am talking about multiple operations in one shot, btw, not across server requests. Just if I want to be sure a new record gets added to three tables, or none.

If you create a new object, and you do $objectA->save($objectB), it will immediately add the ITFK to objectA if the relation is so that there is a one-to-many from A to B. However, if you just do $objectA->save(), there is obviously no relation to save, and the ITFK is set to NULL.

I was just setting it to a default value (in this case, 1, but ideally it could be 0). I guess as long as I set the validation as required on the key, that would ensure I always save something as the foreign key value when I do a straight save() - albeit a bit of a hack, and making the foreign key requirement pointless, but would work.