[Koha-devel] [Koha::Object] Related records and calling methods from templates

[Jonathan Druart]

2016-09-15 13:03 GMT+02:00 Marcel de Rooy <M.de.Rooy at rijksmuseum.nl>:
> Hi devs,
>

Hi :)

> I am seeing more Koha objects that include methods for related records like
> Koha::Patron, sub image referring to Koha::Patron::Images.
>
> As a second example, on bug 14610 (article requests), a biblio, item, branch
> and borrower method is added to Koha::ArticleRequest.

These methods should highlight the relationships (fk or missing fk at
DB level) between objects. They make sense to me as long as we want to
manipulate Koha::Objects.

Note that branch should be replaced with library ;)

> Obviously, they all follow the same pattern.
>
> Could we generalize that, and keep our code cleaner?
>
>
>
> And do we always need the full Koha object? For use in a template we may
> need only a few columns.

What do you suggest? It's much easier to always get and pass a full
object than sometimes a smaller one without knowing exactly what it
represents (which methods you can call on it).
I don't think it will hurt perfs too much.
Of course there will certainly be some rooms for improvements here, it
should not be a rule written in stone.

> We start passing these objects to the templates now too, making it possible
> to call methods from the template. It is possible, but do we really want
> that? More code ends up in the template, maybe harder to find since you now
> use borrower.method instead of borrower->method etc. Secondly, reading
> borrower.something might not immediately tell you that something is a method
> instead of a column.

Yes, I don't think it's a good thing. We should avoid calling methods
in template, only accessors. If the method is trivial, I'd say it
could be ok.

> In other cases we have added a sort of wrapper like Branches.GetName from
> the Branches plugin.

That was to help us, and that will continue to help us, because the fk
don't always exist.
If should not hurt perf neither.

> I am interested to know if we want to enforce this wrapper approach for
> instance, or just continue on the current road.

Where and why? :)

Usually I don't think TT plugins should be used for such things. In an
ideal world, we would manipulate objects in templates and
library.branchname would display the library name (in a ideal world it
would be library.name...).
Or patron.library.branchname, but we should not need a plugin for
that: Branches.GetName( patron.branchcode )

Cheers

> Thx,
>
>
>
> Marcel
>
>
>
>
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