Data Access Layer, Best Practices
- by labratmatt
I'm looking for input on the best way to refactor the data access layer (DAL) in my PHP based web app. I follow an MVC pattern: PHP/HTML/CSS/etc. views on the front end, PHP controllers/services in the middle, and a PHP DAL sitting on top of a relational database in the model. Pretty standard stuff. Things are working fine, but my DAL is getting large (codesmell?) and becoming a bit unwieldy.
My DAL contains almost all of the logic to interface with my database and is full of functions that look like this:
function getUser($user_id) {
$statement = "select id, name from users where user_id=:user_id";
PDO builds statement and fetchs results as an array
return $array_of_results_generated_by_PDO_fetch_method;
}
Notes:
The logic in my controller only interacts with the model using functions like the above in the DAL
I am not using a framework (I'm of
the opinion that PHP is a templating
language and there's no need to
inject complexity via a framework)
I generally use PHP as a procedural
language and tend to shy away from
its OOP approach (I enjoy OOP
development but prefer to keep that
complexity out of PHP)
What approaches have you taken when your DAL has reached this point? Do I have a fundamental design problem? Do I simply need to chop my DAL into a number of smaller files (logically divide it)? Thanks.
